the repeating rifle (transforming power of technology)

GUNPOWDER

THE INTERNET

THE PERSONAL COMPUTER

THE PRINTING PRESS

THE REPEATING RIFLE

THE STEAM ENGINE

TRANSFORMING POWER OF TECHNOLOGY

THE REPEATING RIFLE

Philadelphia

Samuel Willard Crompton

TRANSFORMING POWER OF TECHNOLOGY

CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERSVP, NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Sally CheneyDIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION Kim ShinnersCREATIVE MANAGER Takeshi TakahashiMANUFACTURING MANAGER Diann Grasse

Staff for THE REPEATING RIFLEEXECUTIVE EDITOR Lee MarcottASSOCIATE EDITOR Kate SullivanPRODUCTION ASSISTANT Megan EmeryPICTURE RESEARCHER Amy DunleavySERIES AND COVER DESIGNER Keith TregoLAYOUT 21st Century Publishing and Communications Inc.

©2004 by Chelsea House Publishers,a subsidiary of Haights Cross Communications.All rights reserved. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

http://www.chelseahouse.com

First Printing

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crompton, Samuel Willard.The repeating rifle/by Samuel Willard Crompton.

p. cm.—(Transforming power of technology)Contents: Kentucky rifles versus British rifles—Anatomy of the gun—Inventorsand inventions—The American Civil War—The Wild West—Arms for empire—The Great War—Gangsters and G-men—The arsenal of democracy—Hunters,sportsmen, and regulators.

ISBN 0-7910-7452-81. Rifles—Juvenile literature. [1. Rifles—History.] I. Title. II. Series.

TS536.4.C76 2003683.4'22—dc21

2003014060

Frontis: Rifles line the walls at Springfield Armory.

CONTENTS

1 Kentucky Rifles versus British Rifles 6

2 Anatomy of the Gun 14

3 Inventors and Inventions 24

4 The American Civil War 34

5 The Wild West 44

6 Arms for Empire 54

7 The Great War 64

8 Gangsters and G-Men 72

9 The Arsenal of Democracy 80

10 Hunters, Sportsmen, and Regulators 88

Chronology of Events 96

Notes 100

Bibliography 102

Further Reading 104Index 105

The Revolutionary War was in its sixth year with no end in sight.

Around noon on October 7, 1780, a large force of American

militia gathered around the base of Kings Mountain, South

Carolina. They had been pursuing British Major Patrick Ferguson

and his Loyalist (Tory) recruits; now they had run them down to

earth. But Ferguson and his men held the high ground, and with

their new rifles they enjoyed a potential superiority in firepower.

What the Americans had was a gritty resolve to defeat Ferguson

and his Loyalists.

Charles Town, South Carolina, had surrendered to the

British army under General Henry Clinton five months earlier,

in May 1780. More than 5,000 American Patriots had laid down

their arms in what was the greatest victory for British forces

in the Revolutionary War. General Clinton had sailed back to

New York City, leaving General Charles Cornwallis in charge of

the southern front. Cornwallis was a skillful and daring leader.

6

Kentucky Riflesversus British Rifles

Like lightning, the flashes; like thunder, the noise;Our rifles struck the poor Tories with sudden surprise.

—From a popular ballad

1AT

ISSU

E Guns have played an important part in American life fromthe earliest days of the colonial settlements. During theRevolutionary War, many Americans fought with the newKentucky rifle (which was really first made in Pennsylvania).Most British soldiers were armed with the “Brown Bess”musket. But on at least two occasions, the British werearmed with the new Ferguson rifle. Do such battles tell usanything about men and the weapons they use? Do menwin battles, or do their weapons do the job?

He relied on the information given to him by two subordinatesin particular: Banastre Tarleton and Patrick Ferguson.

Tarleton and Ferguson were about as different as two Britishofficers could be. Tarleton, who was about 26, was a cavalry officer,full of dash and unquestioned courage. He had, however, earned areputation for brutality. When he and his troops had caught upwith a retreating group of American Patriots at Waxhaws, SouthCarolina, Tarleton’s green-coated dragoons slaughtered well over100 of the Americans, even those who had tried to surrender. Soonafter the incident, Tarleton was nicknamed “Bloody Ben” and“Black Ben,” and the expression “Tarleton’s Quarter” becamecommon in the American South. Tarleton became the man mosthated by the American Patriots.

Ferguson was quite different. About ten years older than

Kentucky Rifles versus British Rifles 7

In October of 1780, Loyalist recruits were massed at the summit

of Kings Mountain. Armed with the new breech-loading rifle,

they believed their defensive position was impenetrable.

But American frontiersmen, armed with the new Kentucky

rifle and a fierce determination, won the day.

Tarleton, Ferguson had entered the British army at an early age.

He rose through the ranks gradually, became a captain, and

made his name through an invention rather than from his

performance in any particular battle. Sometime around 1775,

Ferguson developed the first successful breech-loading rifle

known in the world. Other men had designed breechloaders

before, but none of these guns had ever been considered or

evaluated by the experts of any major European nation.

Ferguson’s rifle (and it was a rifle, rather than a musket)

employed a trigger guard that rotated 180 degrees. As the trigger

guard rotated, it created an opening at the top of the gun, on the

breech, allowing a soldier to insert a ball and powder.1 Simply

rotating the trigger guard again closed the opening, and the gun

was ready to be fired. This was a significant improvement over

the traditional muzzle-loading muskets that were being used by

every European power of the day, and by virtually all of the

Americans, whether they were Patriots or Loyalists. Ferguson

had achieved something quite remarkable.

On June 1, 1776, Ferguson demonstrated his rifle to the

British ordnance experts at Woolwich, England. Lord Jeffrey

Amherst, who had come to observe the demonstration, was

astonished by Ferguson’s ability to fire four shots a minute, even

though there was a light drizzle of rain.2 This was significant

because rainy conditions made the widely used flintlock muskets

inoperable. Furthermore, because he was both something of an

athlete and a fine marksman, Ferguson was able to hit his target

three times out of four even when lying down. Such accuracy

was unheard of with the flintlock. Despite the success of the

demonstration, however, the conservative British army authorized

the purchase of only 100 of the new Ferguson rifles. The rifles

were made that year, and in 1777, Ferguson crossed the Atlantic to

serve under General William Howe in what the British hoped

would be the final campaign against the American rebels.

At the Battle of Brandywine Creek, fought in Pennsylvania

in September 1777, Ferguson briefly had American General

THE REPEATING RIFLE8

George Washington in his sights. The American leader hadcome dangerously close to the British lines, and Ferguson couldhave dropped him from the saddle. Something stayed Fergu-son’s hand. Whether this was old-fashioned British chivalry orsimply hesitation, Ferguson let Washington ride away. Histori-ans ever since have remarked that the fate of the American Rev-olution might have been different had Ferguson made the shot.

During the battle, Ferguson suffered an injury to his rightelbow. He was unable to serve in combat for some weeks. WhileFerguson was recuperating, General Howe disbanded the Fergu-son riflemen and put the Ferguson rifles in storage. In his youngeryears, General Howe had been a daring officer, but he now sufferedfrom the inborn conservatism of the British army. He hoped tohear no more about new rifles, or about Major Ferguson. In 1778,General Howe was replaced by General Henry Clinton. The newcommander was intrigued by Ferguson and with the promise ofthe new Ferguson rifle. Thus, Major Ferguson accompaniedGeneral Clinton on his voyage south in 1779, and played a part in


Breech-loading rifles were much easier to load than the old

muzzle-loading rifles. The Ferguson rifle, pictured here, had

a trigger guard that could be rotated to open or close the

chamber that held the ball and powder. With this time-saving

device, soldiers were ready to shoot more quickly.

the siege of Charles Town that ended in May of 1780. Ferguson was

then authorized to raise a regiment of American Loyalists and arm

them with his new weapon. Ferguson proceeded apace, gathering

loyalist recruits, but his efforts were derailed by news of the

Massacre at Waxhaws where Banastre Tarleton and his dragoons

had slaughtered American soldiers. Many American Loyalists

became too frightened to join the British army, and the fury of the

American frontiersmen knew no bounds. They were ready to fight

Tarleton, Ferguson, and whoever else might come along.

The men who gathered to fight the British have been

described in a publication of the National Park Service. Written

in 1945, these words echo the spirit of the mountain men of

North and South Carolina during the Revolution:

The pioneer mountain men ordinarily were tall, gaunt,

saturnine, somewhat indolent, but fully capable of sustained,

severe activity. They were of strong will, adventurous, and

highly individualistic, leader less, resentful of discipline, but

vigorous, sturdy, and thoroughly adaptable to the country in

which they elected to make their homes. Even to this day

the mountain people are stout individualists, independent

in their thinking, and intensely loyal to their country. The

introduction of schools, roads, and automobiles and the

vast complexity of modern life have markedly changed their

customs. They have passed in less than one generation from

pre-Victorians, living in glorious simplicity, to the current

age of speed. This pioneer stock, however, remains even

today unmixed with foreign elements. They are, excepting the

Indians, our purest-blooded Americans.3

The men described in the publication were men like Daniel

Boone and Davy Crockett. They were women like Nancy Ward

who had chased the British out of her home during the Revolution.

They were even men like Andrew Jackson who fought four duels

in his long life, and who became president of the United States


at the age of 59. These were the men and women who first used

the Kentucky rifle.

As the news of the Massacre at Waxhaws spread, many of the

Carolina mountain men came out in force to resist the British. One

group of them won a skirmish against Ferguson’s Loyalist troops at

Ramsour’s Mill, South Carolina. Furious, Ferguson sent a message

to the mountain men, urging them to lay down their arms and act

peacefully. He warned that if they refused, he would travel through

their land and wreck destruction on their homes.

In September 1780, British General Cornwallis led his army in

a full-scale invasion of North Carolina. Major Ferguson and his

Loyalist soldiers were given the honor of conducting the left wing.

But as they moved into North Carolina, Ferguson and his men did

not realize that they were being tracked by a large group of

Carolina mountain men. Led by men with names like Campbell,

Sevier, and Shelby, many of these mountain men were sons or

grandsons of Scots Highlanders who had fought for Bonnie Prince

Charlie in the Scottish uprising of 1745. The Scots had been

crushed by the English at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, and their

descendants bore no love for King George or the Union Jack. Even

so, they might have stayed out of the conflict had it not been for

Ferguson’s threat, which they considered a great insult.

When he realized how close the mountain men were, Ferguson

took up his defensive position on Kings Mountain, located just

one mile south of the border between North Carolina and South

Carolina. There he believed he could withstand the attacks of all

the mountain men in the world. He held the high ground, and

his men were trained in the use of his rifle.

The mountain men arrived at the base of Kings Mountain at

noon on October 7 and commenced their attack at around three

in the afternoon. Ferguson had placed his men in good defensive

positions, but it availed them little. The Loyalist troops lacked the

vigor and decisiveness of the mountain men. Within one hour, the

battle was over. Ferguson was dead. His regiment had suffered

enormous casualties. About 250 were killed outright; about 150


were badly wounded. All the rest, about 800, were taken prisoner.

It was a resounding victory for the mountain men.4

Ferguson’s disastrous defeat caused General Cornwallis to delay

the invasion of North Carolina. When he moved north a second

time, in January of 1781, Cornwallis’ left flank also suffered a

severe defeat. This time it was Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his

cavalrymen who were thrashed at the Battle of Cowpens, won by

American General Daniel Morgan. A Pennsylvanian by birth,

and a frontiersman to his fingertips, Morgan became the idol of


The Kentucky Rifle

It was a misnomer from the very start. The “Kentucky” rifle was actuallymanufactured in Pennsylvania, by German and Swiss gunsmiths who neversaw the Kentucky bluegrass. But the name stuck, and the Kentucky riflebecame one of the most famous of all early American guns.

Sometime around 1720, a handful of gunsmiths in Lancaster County,Pennsylvania, began to experiment with making rifles rather than muskets.Rifle comes from the German word riflen, meaning “to groove.” By makinggrooves in the barrel of a gun, a smith was able to provide a countervailingforce against the randomness that came from a smooth-bored barrel. Byabout 1750, the Lancaster County smiths had perfected the Kentucky rifle,which became the mainstay for the American frontiersmen until the time ofDavy Crockett.

The Kentucky rifle was much more accurate than the smoothbore musketthat preceded it. An American rifleman could hit his target—often a turkeyor pheasant—at a range of 200, and sometimes even 250 yards, while themusket was reliable only at a range of 50 to 100 yards.The only weakness ofthe Kentucky rifle was that it took a long time to reload, perhaps as much asthree times as long as it took to reload the smoothbore musket.This did notmake a difference in hunting, but in warfare, riflemen were kept back fromthe front lines so that they could fire without being exposed to enemybayonet charges.

Long, lean, and light, the Kentucky rifle resembled the frontiersmenwho held it in their hands. A thing of beauty, it remains a major collector’sitem today, and it speaks volumes about the resourcefulness of earlyAmerican craftsmen.

the rugged Americans who fought the British in the south.

General Cornwallis moved his forces to the coast of Virginia,

where he thought he would have greater success. Instead, he

ended up at a tobacco town called Yorktown, where he met his

nemesis. In October of 1781, Cornwallis surrendered and the

Revolutionary War ended.

The Battle of Kings Mountain highlights some of the differ-

ent social and military forces involved in the Revolutionary War.

A group of American frontiersmen, bound together more by

family and clan loyalty than by loyalty to a new country, met and

defeated a group of American Loyalists. The Kentucky rifle,

carried by the Patriots, defeated the Ferguson rifle, carried

by some of the Loyalists. It was a conflict between order and

discipline on one hand, and vigor and individualism on the

other, and it would be echoed throughout the history of the rifle.

Even today, Americans are divided between those who firmly

believe in the right and need of the individual citizen to bear

arms and those who believe that those arms have become too

dangerous for common use. These contrasting beliefs, in their

infancy, were seen at the Battle of Kings Mountain.

A popular ballad about the battle ran:

We marched to the Cowpens, Campbell was there

Shelby, Cleveland, and Colonel Sevier;

Men of renown, sir, like lions, so bold—

Like lions undaunted, ne’er to be controlled.

We set out on our march that very same night;

Sometimes we were wrong, sometimes we were right;

Our hearts being run in true liberty’s mold,

We valued not hunger, wet, weary, or cold.

On the top of Kings Mountain the old rogue we found,

And like brave heroes, his camp did surround;

Like lightning, the flashes; like thunder, the noise;

Our rifles struck the poor Tories with sudden surprise.5


No one knows exactly who coined the expression “lock, stock,

and barrel,” but the words are now synonymous with the phrase

“the whole darned thing.” It is interesting that an expression

concerning firearms has been applied to purchases and the

exchange of goods; perhaps this indicates the meaning and value

that Americans give to their weapons.

The “lock” is that part of the gun that strikes the match, flint,

or percussion cap, thereby igniting the gunpowder within the pan.

The stock is the part of the weapon which the person shooting

holds closest to himself, usually to his cheek. The barrel is the part

of the gun that holds the gunpowder and cartridge. Every gun is

made from these three rather simple units, but the variations on

these three units have been extensive over the centuries.

14

Anatomy of the Gun2

ATIS

SUE No one knows exactly who first invented guns.The inventor

or inventors are lost to history. The progression frommatchlock to wheel lock and then to flintlock parallels othermovements in world technology. At the same time thatEuropeans discarded the matchlock in favor of the wheellock, seamen abandoned the caravel for the galleon. Later,when European soldiers discarded the wheel lock for theflintlock, naval shipwrights stopped building galleons, andbegan building ships-of-the-line.

What do these changes in military and naval technologysuggest about weapons development? Did weapons devel-opment help or impede in the growth of other technologies?

Humans have been using projectiles of different sorts forthousands of years. The Romans made catapults; the Byzantinesemployed a type of naphtha called “Greek fire”; and theChinese were master builders of the mangonel, a sophisticatedsiege weapon. But no one used gunpowder until around1,000 years ago, and it only came into general use in Europe inthe fifteenth century.

Guns and gunpowder first appeared in Europe in themiddle of the fourteenth century. They had been invented inChina and had made their way west. The first recorded use ofcannon came at the siege of the city of Calais in 1347, duringthe Hundred Years’ War between England and France.6

Anatomy of the Gun 15

This modern rifle, displayed by an Olympic athlete, shows that the basic

design of rifles has not changed much since the Revolutionary War era. The

lock strikes a percussion cap, igniting the gunpowder. The athlete holds the

stock braced against his shoulder. The cartridge is fired through the barrel

at the front end.

Although the armored knight would play a role on the battle-

field for another 200 years, the primacy he had enjoyed

during the Middle Ages was coming to an end; a trained

musketeer would soon be able to bring down the greatest and

best trained of knights.

Cannon came first, but were followed by the earliest

firearms in the middle of the fifteenth century. The very word

“firearms” comes from an “arm that fires,” which can be loosely

translated into “gun.”

The matchlock gun was the first to appear, shortly before

Columbus sailed to the Americas. The matchlock resembled the

guns of today; it was carried by a single individual, who could

fire, move, load, and fire again. All this was an improvement over

cannon, which were too heavy to move and required cannoneers

that stood in one place.

The matchlock had the three components that we still

identify with any form of gun. The stock was the wooden part

that included the back section held to the gunner’s cheek as well

as the wood that ran up to the gun’s muzzle. Stocks were highly

valued. Made of brown walnut, they were often pieces of art in

their own way; many gunners chose to embellish them with

illustrated carvings.

The barrel was made of bronze or iron parts and held

the bullet and powder. Barrels were usually not ornamented,

and gunners did not mourn the loss of a barrel in the same

way they would the loss of a stock. The barrel could be more

readily replaced. That left the lock, the most complicated part

of the gun.

Nearly always on the top part of the gun, the lock was

positioned where the gun began to slope down to the part held

to the gunner’s cheek or shoulder. The word “lock” comes from

the resemblance between the operation of a clock and the

operation of the early trigger and firing systems.

The lock had an opening, which led to a pan where

gunpowder was placed. This design remained the same for


several centuries. What was often altered was the method of

igniting the powder within the pan. The issue of how best to

accomplish this led to three distinctive types of guns between

about 1450 and 1750. They were the matchlock, wheel lock,

and flintlock.

First designed in the fifteenth century, the matchlock

involved the use of a slow-burning fuse. The gunner carried a

number of fuses on his person, and in battle (or while hunting),

he lit the end of the cord near the gun. When the trigger was

pulled, the match and fuse quickly descended and ignited the

powder within the pan. For all its cumbersome process, the

matchlock was a fearsome weapon; it let off a tremendous noise

and may have frightened as many people as it actually harmed.

One of the most telling examples of the use of the

matchlock comes from North America. In 1609, French explorer

Samuel de Champlain traveled down the lake in New York

that now bears his name. He made friends with a number of

Algonquin Indians and agreed to fight with them against their

traditional enemies, the Five Nations of Iroquois.

Near the head of Lake Champlain, the Frenchman and

one of his fellow colonists fought with the Algonquins

against hundreds of Iroquois. Champlain later related how

the use of just two matchlock guns had terrified the Iroquois:

“He loaded his arquebus with four bullets, drew a bead on

the three chiefs, and fired. All three fell, two dead and the

third mortally wounded.” 7

The Iroquois fled in great fear. Champlain had won an

important victory, but he had also turned the Iroquois into

mortal enemies of the French. When the Iroquois obtained

their own guns, they were swift to use them against the

French in Canada.

The matchlock was a terrific weapon in good weather, but the

presence of the slow-burning fuse made it vulnerable to rain or

snow, and gunners were sometimes injured when the matches and

powder they carried exploded. Therefore, European gunsmiths


began to look for a new type of weapon. They came up with the

wheel lock sometime in the sixteenth century.

The wheel lock operated on much the same principle as

the matchlock, but had no fuse. Instead, the trigger operated a

wheel-like device that brought a hammer or “cock” down to

the pan and ignited the soft iron pyrites it held. The great

advantage of this gun was that it could be fired in all types of

weather, because the powder within the pan was protected

from the elements.

The wheel lock became very popular with the knights and

nobles of Europe. Starting in the sixteenth century and up until

about 1700, knights and lords used the wheel lock for hunting,

dueling, and to impress their friends. The wheel lock was truly

a work of art, and engravers made the metal stock as shiny

and ornate as they could.8 This was the gun carried by the

“gentlemen adventurers” who came to Jamestown, Virginia, in

1607 and to Plymouth Plantation in 1620.

If there was a weakness to the wheel lock, it was expense.

The “wheel” had to be kept in excellent condition, and smoky

black powder sometimes obscured the instruments and caused

them to function poorly. More importantly, there were about

50 distinct parts of the wheel lock gun, most of which could be

fitted only by an expert gunsmith. The wheel lock was therefore

of limited use on the battlefield, since repairs could not be made

on the spot. The gun remained a treasure of the European elite,

but it did not have a great effect on the lives of the common

people or the warfare of the times. The need for a gun that could

perform in all sorts of weather led to the flintlock.

First made by a Frenchman around 1615, the flintlock built

on the earlier success of the matchlock. The flintlock musket

looked much like a matchlock, but there were no fuses or

matches. Instead, the gunner pulled back, or “cocked” a hammer,

which when released, struck sparks from flint rather than iron

pyrites. The main difference was that the flint struck fire nearly

every time, and the powder in the pan was easily ignited.9


By about 1650, the flintlock had replaced the matchlock asthe weapon of choice for musketeers, and by about 1700 boththe matchlock and wheel lock were considered obsolete.The relative ease with which the flintlock could be fired,and the low cost of its repair, made it the standard weapon ofthe European infantryman, whether he was British, French,Spanish, or Austrian.

British soldiers began using the famous “Brown Bess”musket in the early 1700s. This musket was not any better ormore effective than its continental counterparts; what made theBrown Bess famous was that the British were already starting tocreate colonies around the world, and the Brown Bess appearedin far-off places like the Caribbean, North America, Africa,and India. First issued in 1703, the Brown Bess remained the


The wheel lock rifle was invented by European gunsmiths in the sixteenth

century and was first used by the European nobility for hunting and dueling.

The stock was often engraved with elaborate designs.The “gentlemen adventurers”

who sailed to Virginia in the early 1600s carried wheel lock rifles.


British soldiers began to use the Brown Bess, the first breech-

loading musket, in the early 1700s, at the same time that Britain

was establishing its vast colonial empire. The Brown Bess saw

action in North America, India, and Africa. It played a major role

in the Revolutionary War, as these men performing a historical

reenactment illustrate, and was still being used during the

Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s.

principal weapon of the British soldier until about 1840.10

During that time span, the British fought the Americans in the

Revolutionary War, the French in the Napoleonic Wars, and

several other enemy armies in smaller conflicts.

Perhaps it was the steady quality of the Brown Bess musket

that prevented the British from capitalizing upon the new inven-

tion of Major Patrick Ferguson. We can only wonder what

might have happened in the Revolutionary War had the British

equipped thousands of their men with this new rifle that could

be loaded and fired three or four times per minute. But the

ingrained conservatism of gunmakers and of ordnance suppliers

prevailed, and the British stuck with the smoothbore musket.

The new rifle created by colonists in Lancaster County,

Pennsylvania, was used primarily in West Virginia, Kentucky,

and Tennessee. The people who used it were the hardy pioneers

of the Appalachian Mountains. Their descendants still exhibit

their hardy spirit, and since so much of riflemaking in the

United States is tied up with their story, it is useful to examine

these frontier and mountain people.

Daniel Boone is the archetypal American frontiersman.

Born in Pennsylvania, he moved a number of times in his youth,

and by the time he was a self-sufficient young man, the frontier had

moved to West Virginia. Boone was not the first American to go

through the Cumberland Gap (that honor goes to Dr. Thomas

Walker), but he was the first to lead a group of settlers through

the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky. In 1774, these settlers built

the fortified town of Boonesboro.

The Shawnee Indians of Kentucky already called the white

men “Long Knives,” but they might as well have called them

“Long Rifles.” Equipped with the Lancaster County-made rifle,

the Kentuckians fired three rounds a minute with great accuracy.

Employing the Indian tactic of fighting man-to-man, and relying

on marksmanship, the white settlers won most of their battles

against the Indians. The distance from Virginia to Kentucky

was so great that the Revolutionary War in Kentucky had a



Hardy pioneers like Daniel Boone used the Kentucky rifle, which was

first manufactured in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It could fire three

rounds a minute and was often used by frontiersmen to fight Indians

in the wilderness. The Kentucky rifle shown here has a maple stock

and is decorated with wrought-iron trim.

different character from that fought on the Atlantic coast. The

Kentuckians fought a deadly, long war with the Shawnees, who

were British allies. Thus, one of the last major engagements of

the Revolutionary War was at Blue Licks, Kentucky, where the

whites suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the Indians.

The Shawnee were undefeated when the Revolutionary War

ended, but the peace treaty between the newly independent

colonies and Great Britain gave the western lands, including

Kentucky, to the Americans. On paper at least, the young nation

had acquired most of the land east of the Mississippi River.

There was enough wildness and danger in the western lands

to produce a whole new generation of restless and aggressive

young white Americans. They now knew that their weaponry

was superior to anything the Indians had, and they knew that

given enough time they would make their way to the Mississippi

River. This new generation of frontiersmen produced men such

as Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, and Andrew Jackson.

By 1800, something new and different had emerged in

North America. A new, young nation called the United States of

America had appeared. It might have looked fragile, since it

stretched from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south and

faced enemy Indians to the west and the Spanish to the south-

west. But the most “forward-placed” Americans, the southern

frontiersmen, had a firm belief in their right to the land, and

they had adopted enough of the tactics of the Indians to become

supreme wilderness fighters. Challenges lay ahead, to be sure,

but the men of the mountains would meet them with courage

and with ever-improving rifles.


At the very beginning of the nineteenth century, the gun

remained much as it had been for the past 150 years. The

flintlock musket was still the supreme firearm so far as

generals, politicians, and contractors were concerned. Some

small attention was given to the new rifles that were being

produced in America, but nearly every authority agreed that

the standard musket remained the most important battle-

field weapon.

This conservatism applied to the highest ranks of the greatest

powers. The great Napoleon, who led more men in battle than

any European commander since Roman times, never gave much

thought to a replacement for the musket; his French soldiers

continued to carry the Charlevoix musket, which had been a

French staple since about 1765.

24

Inventors andInventions3

ATIS

SUE Three amateurs led the way in American gun development:

Eli Whitney, Reverend Alexander Forsythe, and Samuel Colt.Not one of the three was trained in the development ormaking of guns, but each was a gifted inventor who tookup the work as a personal passion and then contributedmightily to the growth of the firearms industry.

What does this suggest about inventors and inventions?Are the best machines or guns those that come fromindustrial factories or major think tanks, or do they some-times come from individual workshops and the drivenpursuit of perfection?

Napoleon’s enemies were equally conservative. The British,

by virtue of their navy and merchant marine, had access to the

greater part of the globe. They were therefore in a position to

know about the alternatives, yet they continued to use the

Brown Bess musket, which had been standard issue to British

infantrymen since 1745. Even the Duke of Wellington, Britain’s

greatest soldier, disdained the idea of new weapons. What had

served during the eighteenth century would continue to serve in

the nineteenth.

The Russians, Prussians, Spaniards, and Austrians also

continued to use the weapons of the eighteenth century. The

Napoleonic Wars, which raged from 1800 until 1815, were

fought almost exclusively with muskets. This limitation did

not prevent the wars from being deadly; some three million

men perished during this time. But the gun was certainly not

being pushed as far as it might; the burden of killing rested

upon the single-shot musket, the bayonet charge, and the slash

of the cavalryman’s saber. Because of the innate conservatism

of the European leaders, it might be said that the eighteenth

century, and its weapons, lasted until the Battle of Waterloo

in 1815. On that battlefield, Napoleon’s career ended; so too

did the rigid emphasis on straight lines of infantry and the

exchange of single-shot volleys.

When Napoleon lost his throne in 1815 and was exiled to

the remote island of St. Helena, the European powers breathed a

deep sigh of relief. Perhaps there would be peace for some time

to come; at least, there would be no more interference from

upstarts such as Bonaparte.

One might think that the period of peace in Europe between

1815 and 1851, when the Crimean War began, might have been

rather dull in terms of the development of weapons. The opposite

proved the case. Three amateurs led the way in the making and

refining guns.

Historians often question the reality behind the myth of

Eli Whitney. As much as his claims have been debunked, he

Inventors and Inventions 25

remains a key part of the American standardization process,especially where guns are concerned.

Born in Massachusetts in 1765, Eli Whitney was entrancedby things mechanical from an early age. In 1792, he went toGeorgia to serve as a tutor on the plantation of Catherine


Fought in 1815, the Battle of Waterloo was typical of the major conflicts

in which straight lines of infantrymen fired upon each other in single-shot

volleys. As the infantrymen shot their rifles, cavalrymen charged enemy

lines with swords. Napoleon lost the battle and was exiled to the island

of St. Helena.

Greene, widow of Nathanael Greene, a Revolutionary general.

While there, Whitney devised a simple machine that could

separate pure cotton from cottonseeds 50 times faster than

slaves could do by hand. In one bold stroke, Whitney solved a

major problem for cotton farmers in the American South, and

perpetuated a problem for the nation as a whole.11 Many people

still believe that slavery might have died of its own weight had

not the new cotton gin provided a way to make an unprofitable

institution profitable. Whitney faced his own problem with his

new invention. When he attempted to patent his machine, it was

already too late. Others had copied his prototype before he could

make a formal claim to it.

Returning to the North, Whitney turned his inventive

mind to the making of guns. He set up shop in Whitneyville,

Connecticut, and he won contracts from the U.S. government to

produce rifles. Whether they were truly rifles, with ridges, or

whether they were just up-to-date smoothbore muskets remains

the subject of some controversy. In either case, Whitney led the

way in standardizing parts for small arms.

Prior to 1800, virtually every musket or rifle made in the

United States (and for that matter almost anywhere else) was

handmade by an individual craftsman. This process led to a

beautiful, even magnificent, product, but it was a slow process.

Whitney foresaw that making standard parts, which could be

rapidly replaced even by someone who was not an expert, was

the way of the future. Though not specifically addressing the

subject of guns, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton

had predicted this trend in his “Report on Manufactures” to the

U.S. Congress in 1791.

Whitney went to Washington, D.C. He presented his new

equipment to President John Adams and a handful of cabinet

officers who were deeply impressed by the speed with which

Whitney could re-assemble guns from their constituent parts.12

Whitney continued to win government contracts, even though

he was nearly always late in production.


At the time, there were only two federal armories in theUnited States: one at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and the other inSpringfield, Massachusetts. Because the latter was so close tothe newly established factories of New England, and becauseinnovation as a whole was faster in the North than in theSouth, the armory at Springfield was the leader in gunproduction. Soon after the end of the War of 1812, Yankeeinventors began to puzzle over new ways to make guns, andthey had notable successes.

Meanwhile, a Scottish vicar led the way in makingweapons much more dependable, and therefore more deadly.He was Reverend Alexander Forsythe of the parish ofBelhelvie. Forsythe was an avid sportsman, who particularlyenjoyed duck hunting. In the many hours he spent hunting,Forsythe found that the intended prey often escaped because


Eli Whitney, whose famous cotton gin removed seeds from cotton bolls

50 times faster than human hands, was also a skilled gunsmith. He was one

of the first gunsmiths to envision rifles with replaceable standard parts. His

ideas impressed President John Adams, and the U.S. government offered

Whitney contracts to supply American fighting men. Unfortunately, his

orders were seldom delivered on time.

of the noise produced when the powder ignited in the pan.

The second, or perhaps second-and-a-half between the igni-

tion in the pan and the actual shot leaving the barrel allowed

many ducks and other would-be victims to flee. Forsythe

experimented for some time before he came up with an answer,

which he found in fulminates.

Forsythe found that some of these substances exploded

more readily if they were struck by a sharp blow rather than

through the traditional use of fire. He therefore designed some-

thing called the percussion lock, which later gave way to the

percussion cap. Between them, these two innovations opened

the way for guns that were truly weatherproof.13

The percussion lock was a round plug that was set onto the

side of the gun barrel. The hammer descended, as in previous

times, but it hit a small cap, which the rifleman placed on top of

the percussion “bottle.” The result was an internal spark that led

to the explosion of the bullet from the gun barrel, without the

previous giveaway noise. Suddenly Forsythe could hunt his

ducks more successfully.

Had this device been patented and available for general

use during the Napoleonic Wars, which were then coming to

an end, those wars would have been infinitely more deadly.

Even though we shudder to learn that 40,000 Frenchmen were

killed or wounded at the Battle of Waterloo, that number

could easily have been doubled had the percussion lock and

cap been available. As it was, Forsythe’s invention came too

late to influence the Napoleonic era. It came into its own over

the next 40 years.

Forsythe patented his percussion system in 1807, and set

up in business in London, England, in partnership with

James Watt, the man who had perfected the steam engine

some 20 years earlier. But Forsythe, like Eli Whitney, never

profited very much from his invention; the percussion system

was too logical and was immediately copied by numerous

other inventors. The use of the percussion lock and the


percussion cap spread rapidly to other countries, includingPrussia, France, Austria, and the United States.

The third amateur to break onto the scene was Samuel Coltof Hartford, Connecticut. His name would become nearlysynonymous with pistols, rapid fire, and the conquest of theAmerican West.

Time has not dimmed Colt’s reputation. His legendary


This 1940 photograph of Springfield Armory in Massachusetts shows a visitor

examining rows of rifles standing in their racks. Nearly 100 years earlier, poet

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the armory with his wife, who thought

the rifles resembled organ barrels. Longfellow later used this image in a

poem dedicated to peace.

six-shooter is still considered one of the primary reasons why

whites took the West from American Indians. As usual, though,

there is both more and less to the story.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814, Colt was a gifted

but troubled child. In 1830, young Samuel set fire to a school

building while conducting one of his explosion experiments,

and his father sent him to sea. While at sea, Colt whittled a

wooden model of a revolving, multi-barreled pistol.

Returning home, Colt continued to work on his experiments.

He took out the patent for his first pistol in 1836; the cylinder

rotated automatically, soon giving it the nickname of “six-shooter.”

In 1847, he contracted with Eli Whitney, Jr., to make 1,000

revolvers in Whitneyville, Connecticut. Some of the first Colt


The Federal Armories

Springfield, Massachusetts, on the Connecticut River, was the site of the firstfederal armory in the United States. Harpers Ferry, located at the confluenceof the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers (in what is now West Virginia) wasthe second. The two locations have remained household words for nearly200 years, as they have furnished so many of the weapons used by Americansfrom the War of 1812 to the Vietnam War.

Springfield was in the center of a burgeoning industrial area. Between1800 and 1880, the lower Connecticut River Valley was the birthplace ofnumerous innovations and inventions. The industrial lathe was pioneeredthere; the sewing machine received its start there; and the guns turned outat Springfield Armory were first-rate. Whether this was because of the qualityof the tools or the dedication of the machinists is difficult to say.

Harpers Ferry, which served as the armory for the Southern states, wasattacked by the abolitionist John Brown in 1859.He intended to seize weaponsand distribute them to slaves. Brown was cornered and captured at HarpersFerry. He was executed in December 1859, but his noble and calm demeanorprior to execution won for him the hearts of millions of Northerners. Hisexploits were memorialized in the words of an abolitionist song: “John Brown’sbody lies a-moldering in the grave . . . but his soul goes marching on.”

revolvers produced were used by the Texas Rangers in their

fights with Mexicans.14

Colt later filled orders for European governments, including

the Ottoman Empire. His revolvers won first prize at the London

Exhibition of 1851, sponsored by Queen Victoria and Prince

Albert. Colt was also invited to Russia where he met Czar

Alexander II. Traditionalists consider Colt, who died in 1862, to

be a “tinker” rather than a true inventor. There is, however, no

doubt that his invention and his skill in marketing that invention

made the United States one of the leading arms-manufacturing

nations of the world.

In 1843, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited

Springfield Armory. His wife likened the guns in their stacks to

the branches of a church organ and asked Longfellow to write a

poem to peace. He did so, in “The Arsenal at Springfield”:

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,

Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;

But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing

Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,

When the death-angel touches those swift keys!

What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies! . . .

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,

With such accursed instruments as these,

Thou drownest Nature’s sweet and kindly voices,

And jarrest the celestial harmonies? . . .

Down the dark future, through long generations,

The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, “Peace!”


Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals

The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies!

But beautiful as songs of the immortals,

The holy melodies of love arise.15

Longfellow’s words spoke for many Americans in the ante-

bellum (before Civil War) era. This was the period of the

temperance movement and of utopian communities, such as

those created by the Shakers. But at the same time, the northern

and southern parts of the United States were in increasing

conflict over the issue of slavery.


During the 1850s, developments took place that contributed to

making the Civil War one of the deadliest conflicts in the history

of warfare. New weapons were created, and new ways of firing

those weapons led to greater “kill” rations than ever before.

The British led the way with the Enfield rifle, patented in

1852. Though not a repeating weapon, the Enfield had a greater

distance of fire than anything that had come before. When

equipped with a Minie bullet (a self-contained cartridge,

containing powder and ball), the Enfield was deadly at up to

800 yards.

Europeans first experienced the new killing style in a short

war between France and Austria in 1859. At the battles of

Magenta and Solferino, Emperor Napoleon III, nephew to the

great Napoleon, was shocked by the volume of fire and the

terrific casualty rates. Though France won the war, Napoleon

became something of a pacifist from this experience.

In the United States, the Springfield rifle, patented in

1855, became the model for most of the weapons that would

34

The AmericanCivil War

Give us anything but that damned Yankee rifle thatcan be loaded on Sunday and fired all the week.

—Confederate expression regarding the Henry rifle

4AT

ISSU

E The Civil War was one of the most remarkable and terribleevents of American history. Over 600,000 Americans werekilled in the four years of war.

How might things have been different? What if the Southhad obtained the first repeating rifles? What if the Northhad been more receptive to the Henry rifle when it firstappeared in 1863?

be used in the Civil War. Much like the Enfield, but sturdier

and distinctly “American,” the Springfield rifle was turned out

in increasing numbers when it became obvious that a war

between the states was inevitable.

John Brown and the numerous legends that grew up

around him were also connected to the history of firearms.

Brown had carried a Sharps rifle throughout the 1850s, and

his murder of six slaveholders at Pottawattamie, Kansas, made

both him and his rifle notorious. Later, when Brown decided

to seize the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, he had the covert

support of many abolitionists in the North, some who sent

him 200 Sharps rifles and a number of Colt revolvers.

Brown attacked the Harpers Ferry arsenal in October

1859; he intended to seize the weapons held there, distribute

them to slaves, and spark a major slave uprising. Southerners

well knew the danger; they remembered Nat Turner’s

Rebellion of 1831. Colonel Robert E. Lee and his Marines

surrounded and captured Brown at Harpers Ferry. Brown was

tried and executed on December 2, 1859. His death made him

an instant martyr to millions in the North, and his exploits

and execution helped to bring on the Civil War a year and a

half later.

The first shots of the Civil War were fired on April 12,

1861. Confederate cannon opened fire on Union Fort Sumter

in the center of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The

War Between the States had begun.

A letter from Colonel of Ordnance H.K. Craig to Secretary

of War J. Holt reveals the relative scarcity of arms and ammu-

nition on both sides:

Sir: In answer to the letter of the Honorable B. Stanton of

the 18th instant I have to state that it appears by the last

returns that there were remaining in the U.S. arsenals and

armories as follows: Percussion muskets and muskets

altered to percussion (caliber .69), 499,554, and percussion

The American Civil War 35

rifles (caliber .54), 42,011; total 541,565. If from thisnumber we deducted the numbers of the same descriptionthat were in the arsenals in South Carolina, Alabama, andLouisiana. . . . it leaves this number, 480,687 . . .

H.K. Craig, Colonel of Ordnance16

These were large numbers for peacetime, but small oneswith which to commence a great war. From the start, therewere concerns among both the Union and Confederate forces


By 1861, bitter debates about slavery and states’ rights had divided the

United States. The South believed the North was trying to meddle in its

affairs, and the presence of a U.S. Army garrison at Fort Sumter, South

Carolina, angered many southerners. On April 12, 1861, Confederate

troops fired upon the fort, and the Civil War began.

that their supplies of rifles, muskets, and “rifled muskets”

would not hold out for the duration of the war.

Craig was replaced as colonel of ordnance by James

Wolfe Ripley a few weeks after the war began. Like his

predecessor, Colonel Ripley had been in the U.S. Army a very

long time. A staunch conservative, he was dead-set against

both the new generation of breech-loading rifles and the new

repeating rifles, such as the Spencer. In the first 14 months of

the war, Colonel Craig had ordered 700,000 rifles for the Union

army, only 8,271 of which were breech-loading weapons.

Despite his concern about the scarcity of firearms, Ripley saw

no reason to order more of the latter.17

The concerns of Colonel Craig and Colonel Ripley were

not shared by the eager volunteers who came forward in the

first year of the war. Known on both sides as the “Boys of ’61,”

these were young men who were stirred to fight either for

the Stars and Stripes (the Union flag) or the Stars and Bars

(the flag of the Confederacy). The young men were inspired by

the patriotic songs they had sung in school and the patriotic

lessons they had absorbed from William H. McGuffey’s Readers,

which were textbooks that instilled moral and religious values

in children. They came eagerly to fight in the war that General

Sherman later described as “all hell.”

Men, both old and young, died in far greater numbers

than either side expected. The Battle of Bull Run in July 1861

was but a taste of what was to come. The Battle of Shiloh,

fought in April 1862, showed this was a war with a ferocious

appetite for killing. The marksmanship of many soldiers had

improved, and the new Enfield and Springfield rifles resulted

in devastating casualties. Some of the worst were suffered

at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and at Gettysburg in

July 1863.

Fredericksburg lies along the south bank of the Rapahannock

River, midway between Washington, D.C., and Richmond,

Virginia. Knowing that Union General Ambrose Burnside


intended to attack, Confederate General Robert E. Lee set up

defensive positions on heights overlooking the town. The Union

Army of the Potomac crossed the river in December and

attacked the heights. As one of Lee’s aides assured him before

the battle began, “General, a chicken couldn’t live in that field

once we open on it.”

More than 12,000 Union soldiers were killed and

wounded in fruitless charges across the open field, as they

tried to reach the rail fence and dug-in positions of the

Confederates. This was a true killing field, and to all who

witnessed it, this should have been the day or event that

showed the power of the rifle when used as a defensive weapon.

General Lee, observing from the heights, commented, “It is

well that war is so terrible; otherwise we should grow too

fond of it.”

The Confederates soon got a dose of their own medicine.

In June 1863, Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia invaded

Maryland and then southern Pennsylvania. There they met the

Union army, led by General George Meade, at the little town

of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863.

The first and second days of fighting were a standoff.

Lee and his Confederates pushed hard, but the North held

stoutly to its defensive position on Cemetery Ridge, south of

the town. On the morning of the third day, Lee selected

General George Pickett to lead a major attack on the very

center of the Union position. Pickett was eager for the

assignment, but General James Longstreet voiced strong

objections to the plan. Longstreet argued for a move around

the Federals, suggesting that it would be better to take up a

position between them and their capital at Washington,

D.C. Lee refused, saying, “They are here, and I will whip

them, or they will whip me.”

Pickett’s Charge, carried out in the afternoon of July 3,

was a complete disaster. Seven thousand men, over half of those

who participated, were killed or wounded. Union artillery


and rifles made mincemeat of the gallant Johnny Rebs whoattacked that day. When the survivors made their way back,Lee rode out and cried, “It’s my fault boys. It’s all my fault.”

And so it was. Lee, who had so often lured Federalcommanders into suicidal charges against his forces, had, foronce, allowed himself to be lured into one instead. The Southcould not afford those 7,000 casualties, and from that dayonward, Confederate forces fought an uphill battle.

Meanwhile, the arsenals of both North and South wereturning out millions of weapons. As they did, some repeating riflescrept into the mix, and by the middle of 1864, some “damnednew Yankee” rifles were wreaking havoc on Southern soldiers.


Fredericksburg lay midway between the northern capital of Washington, D.C.,

and the southern capital at Richmond, Virginia. In December 1862, Union

forces crossed the Potomac River and attacked Confederate forces, which

had set up defensive positions overlooking Fredericksburg. Charging across

an open field, the Union soldiers were mowed down by Confederate rifles.

The conservative Colonel Ripley retired in September 1863and was replaced by Colonel George Ramsay, who saw thepotential of the new breech-loading weapons. In his first yearas chief of U.S. ordnance, Colonel Ramsay doubled the ordersfor breechloaders. He introduced 33,652 repeating rifles andcarbines into the Union armies.

Most spectacular was the Henry rif le, produced bythe Winchester Repeating Arms Company in New Haven,Connecticut. The rim-fire, 15-round rifle was created byBenjamin Tyler Henry, and the very idea of being able to release


At the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate troops under General George

Pickett attempted to assault on Union troops defending a position on

Cemetery Ridge. More than half of the Confederate soldiers involved in

“Pickett’s Charge” were killed or wounded by Union artillery and rifles.

Many historians believe the battle was the beginning of the end for

the Confederacy.

15 shots before having to reload was revolutionary. But, once

again, the U.S. Ordnance Department balked. The new Henry

rifles were considered too fragile for use, and the government

purchased only 1,731 of them. Numerous state regiments,

however, went ahead and bought the Henry.

Like so many important inventions, Ferguson’s breech-

loader among them, Henry’s invention depended on a simple

idea that was expanded into technical sophistication. In

the Henry rifle, the used cartridge was expelled by a fresh

cartridge, allowing an infantryman to shoot once more

before reloading.

The Henry rifle first appeared during the siege of Petersburg

and Richmond. General Ulysses S. Grant pressed his advantage

and boxed Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia within

these two cities and their extended perimeters. The Confederates

were upset by the Yankee sharpshooting that came from the new

Henry rifles.

William Tecumseh Sherman also employed the new Henry

rifles. As he marched southeast from Tennessee into the heart

of the Confederacy in Atlanta, Sherman fought a number of

battles with Confederate General Hood. Hood was audacious

to the point of recklessness, and Sherman lured him into

attacking on open ground. Union men, equipped with their

new Henrys, decimated the lines of oncoming Confederates.

The North now had the advantage, both in better rifles and in

sounder tactics.

One of the most eloquent testimonies to the qualities of

the Henry rifle came from a Union cavalry officer, Major

Claudman, who was held in Libby Prison by the Confederates.

Claudman wrote to Oliver Winchester that he had overheard

Confederate officers discussing Union weapons. One of them,

Claudman reported, had said, “Give us anything but that

damned Yankee rifle than can be loaded on Sunday and fired

all the week.” 18

Sherman continued his March to the Sea. Grant continued


his siege of Richmond and Petersburg. In the spring of 1865,General Lee and his remaining soldiers escaped Richmond,but were run to the earth at Appamatox Court House, whereLee yielded his sword and his army to Grant. Just three weekslater, the last Confederate troops in North Carolina surren-dered to General Sherman at Durham Station. Though someConfederates in Texas and Arkansas had not yielded, the CivilWar was over.

More than 600,000 men had lost their lives. This was thegreatest loss of life in war the United States had suffered to that


As the South grew steadily weaker, a Union army commanded by William

Tecumseh Sherman marched east from Tennessee to the Georgia coast.

Sherman’s soldiers were armed with the Henry rifle, which could be fired

twice before reloading. Though Confederate troops tried to resist, the March

to the Sea could not be stopped. The illustration shows Sherman’s troops in

Savannah, which lies on Georgia’s coastline.

date. As of the early twenty-first century, that number has

not been surpassed. Issues of slavery and abolition, union and

secession had brought the war about, but it took the resolution

of millions of men and the new firepower of millions of rifles to

bring the conflict to an end. When the Civil War ended, a new

American nation had been born—one that would not again

stand divided against itself.


Americans began to move west almost as soon as the Civil War

ended in 1865. There had already been a small number of Americans

who were brave enough to go to Oregon, Texas or the Rocky Moun-

tains, but their numbers greatly increased after the war, and by the

1870s, westward movement had practically become an exodus.

Itemized lists from wagon trains show that westward bound

settlers traveled with sugar, salt, leather, rope, and firearms.

Guns of all types were deemed vital for anyone who crossed the

Mississippi River and headed onto the Great Plains of what are

now Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Fortunately, a new set

of firearms had appeared by this time. Among them were the

new Colts and Winchesters.

Oliver Winchester had so far experienced only limited

success in the gun business. His Henry rifles had appeared too

late to have a major impact on the Civil War, and the U.S. Army

had not wanted to acquire any more official rifles. But the

movement of Americans westward came as a godsend to

44

The Wild West5AT

ISSU

E Americans have long believed that the Winchester rifle andthe Colt six-shooter “won the West.”Since about 1970, whenNative Americans began to demonstrate and demandbetter conditions on their reservations, many people havebegun to question whether the West was won or whetherit was “lost.” This chapter takes the reader into the GreatPlains conflicts between soldiers like Custer and Miles andwarriors like Crazy Horse and Geronimo.

Winchester and in 1867 he introduced the Winchester ModelOne, which became a standard on the western frontier.

The 1866 Winchester was not only handsome — it was

The Wild West 45

A legendary figure of the American West, Buffalo Bill Cody

earned his nickname by killing nearly 4,000 buffalo in about

four months. Riding close to the herd, he often risked his life

as he shot the animals with the Winchester rifle that he prized.

His exploits drew other buffalo hunters to the western plains

and the buffalo herds were almost wiped out.

beautifully engraved—it was the first truly popular repeating

weapon. Bullets were lowered into a chamber at the bottom

of the barrel, and the action of bringing back the trigger

mechanism—“cocking” the rifle—moved yet another cartridge

into position. Never before had an American, or anyone else

around the world, had access to such a gun and the volume of

fire it could create. There were only two major problems:

the barrel became very hot from the volume of fire, and the

cartridge barrel sometimes became fouled with dirt. Otherwise,

the Winchester ruled supreme.

The 1873 Winchester was even more impressive. At the same

time, Samuel Colt came out with a new single-action six-shooter

that nearly equaled the Winchester in efficiency.

The 1873 Colt was handsome, and it fit nicely into the hand.

Most importantly, Colt had designed his pistol so that it would

take exactly the same cartridges as the 1873 Winchester. Even

serious rifle enthusiasts began to experiment with the pistol, and

die-hard pistolmen began to experiment with the rifle. The 1873

Colt and Winchester became a deadly combination. It was said

that when “Judge Colt and his jury of six” tried a case, the

verdict was always the same: “Guilty.”

Who, though, were the enemies? And what did they use

for weapons?

The Native Americans of the Great Plains had not always been

a horse-riding and hunting people. Until about 1600 or even 1650,

most of the Plains Indians had been agricultural peoples, who

supplemented their diet with buffalo meat. But when Spanish

runaway horses appeared on the Great Plains and were captured

and trained, the life of the Plains Indians changed dramatically.

Whether they were Blackfeet in the north, Sioux in the central,

or Comanche on the southern plains, the Indians came to love their

horses. The horse changed the way of life for tribe after tribe.

Indians who had previously raised maize and potatoes now became

fearless riders who hunted the buffalo far and wide. The Plains

Indians became more nomadic, more warlike, and more fearless.


But even at the height of their power on the plains, theIndians never slaughtered buffalo in a reckless manner. To most ofthe tribes, the buffalo was a sacred animal with a mystical power:the ability to give life to the tribal peoples. Therefore, the animalwas hunted and killed with a reverent spirit, and no part of thebuffalo was wasted. All the skin, flesh, and bones were used.19

The wars between Indians and Americans on the plainsbegan in earnest in the 1860s. There were Red Cloud’s War, theBlackfeet War, and numerous others. As the decade passed, ahandful of American military leaders became famous for theirskills at “Indian-fighting.” These men knew more about the

The Wild West 47

The Indians of the Great Plains were fearless people who believed

the buffalo was a sacred animal that gave life to the tribes.They

hunted the buffalo to provide food and hides for their villages.

Indians than did the average American, and three men in

particular were determined to eliminate Indian resistance to the

westward movement of white Americans.

Even before the end of the Civil War, Americans and Indians

were at war on the Great Plains. Chiefs like Red Cloud and

Mangas Coloradas fought the first battles against United States

Army units. The Indians did not often triumph over army

detachments, but they could fight short battles and escape

quickly; their rifles and horsemanship made them equal to the

best army units of the time.

There were times, however, when even the bravest Indians

were completely undone by the appearance of the repeating rifle.

One incident occurred when two former Union soldiers were

mining borax in the country of the Blackfoot Indians of Montana.

One of the two white men involved in the occurrence told this

story many years after the event. The men had kept their Henry

rifles from their Civil War service days. One day they saw 40

Indians approach within close range and lie down in the grass. The

two whites knew what the Indians would do: one of the Indians

showed himself deliberately to draw their fire. Both men fired, and

then the entire force of Indians rose and came forward on the run,

expecting that the white men’s gun barrels were empty. A man who

heard the story from the former soldier recalled:

But those two guns kept right on firing! Shot after shot kept

pouring from the guns over the low log breast work, and to

the indescribable horror of the warriors who considered

themselves already victorious, man after man of their number

fell shrieking or silent in the prairie grass as the deadly and

unheard-of continuous firing blazed steadily at them. . . .

From that day no other attack was ever made upon that

pair. Not only were they thereafter immune but the one of

them I later knew told me that passing Indian bands would

make wide detours to avoid even the neighborhood of their

cabin; or, on meeting one of them, would rush off to a distance


for fear of coming into proximity with the awful magic of

death that had been so terribly exhibited. Once, he told me,

meeting an Indian whom he had reason to believe to have

been one of the survivors of the fight, the brave, with a face of

horror exclaimed, “Spirit guns! Spirit guns!” and was off as

fast as his pony could gallop.20

Once the Civil War was over, the powerful United States had

great reserves of manpower on which to draw. One could even

argue that the Wars on the Plains were useful to the U.S. govern-

ment, since they provided employment for thousands of soldiers

who might otherwise have proved troublesome. Although there

were many chiefs who fought with skill, many army commanders

quickly learned the ways of fighting in the West. The four who

stand out are Custer, Crazy Horse, Crook, and Geronimo.

Born in Ohio, Custer graduated from West Point in 1861.

He became the “boy general,” the youngest in the Union army in

1863, and acquired a reputation for audacity that was unrivaled

during the war. Once the war was won, Custer went west and

fought against Black Kettle and the Cheyenne Indians. Custer

developed a reputation for ruthlessness and skill; his Indian

opponents called him “Yellow Hair.”

Born in Sioux country, Crazy Horse was about the same age as

Custer, and like Custer, Crazy Horse was a warrior to the bone.

Nothing thrilled him as much as the horse, saddle, and rifle. The

two men clashed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876.

Crazy Horse led Sioux and Cheyenne warriors who

destroyed Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. When

the battle was over, “Yellow Hair” and 270 of his fellows lay dead

in the area that the Sioux called the “Greasy Grass.” The Sioux

victory was complete, but short-lived. Other regiments of the

U.S. Army came swiftly west. Some of the Sioux escaped to

Canada, while others, led by Crazy Horse, turned themselves in

to the Americans. Crazy Horse was killed a year later while in

captivity by an Indian scout in the pay of the Americans.

The Wild West 49

Not long ago, a new, massive memorial to Crazy Horse andhis people was built about 25 miles from Mount Rushmore.Begun by the sculptor Ziolkowski and continued by his children,the memorial shows Crazy Horse on horseback, holding hisrifle. This is a fitting testimony to the Sioux leader. His rifle waspart of what made him a great warrior, just as the rifles of theU.S. cavalry were part of what brought him down.


General George A. Custer leads a column of cavalry and artillery deep

into Indian Territory in 1874. Two years later, Custer and his Seventh

Cavalry were defeated at the Battle of Little Bighorn by warriors who

were led by Chief Crazy Horse.

Nearly 1,000 miles to the south of the Little Bighorn,another Indian leader kept up a different type of resistance. TheChiruchua Apache, led by Geronimo (a name given him by theMexicans) fought a series of off-again, on-again wars againstwhite Americans. Geronimo was opposed by General GeorgeCrook, a great Indian fighter who had a deep sympathy for theIndians he pursued.

When Geronimo and Crook sat down together and con-versed, the two men came to an understanding. Geronimo and hisApache warriors accepted reservation life as their only option.

But within a year or two, Geronimo and his band escaped

The Wild West 51

General George Crook (second from right) respected the Apache Indians

and their leader Chief Geronimo (third from left). Crook tried to

persuade the Apache to stop fighting and to live peacefully in

reservations established by the U.S. government.


Annie Oakley

She was born in Ohio in 1860. Her birth name was Phoebe Ann Moses. Herfather died when she was six, and her mother remarried three years later. Herswas a painful childhood,full of dislocation and abandonment.Things improvedwhen she married Francis Butler in 1875. He was a specialty shot for circuses,but it soon turned out that her talent surpassed his. Annie Oakley joinedBuffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show in 1885. Frank Butler was her manager, andshe soon became an integral part of the show.

Annie Oakley was one of the most natural markswoman ever seen. She usedmirrors, she rode on horseback, and she performed tricks such as shootingcigars out of the mouths of astonished men, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm IIamong them.

Chief Sitting Bull, also a show member, called her “Little Sure Shot,” andadopted her into the Sioux Nation. She continued to perform until 1901,retiring after a back injury suffered on a railroad car. She returned briefly tothe stage a decade later and gave shooting exhibitions for American troopsduring the First World War. She died in 1923. Her husband died a few dayslater, and the two are buried side-by-side in Brock, Ohio.

Annie Oakley was perhaps the most admired American woman of hertime. In private she was demure, even shy, but on the stage she demonstrateda magnetism that made her one of the most sought-after performers ofher time. Though she always wore long Victorian skirts and emphasized herfemininity, her performance with a gun clearly demonstrated that guns had anequalizing effect in the West.

Annie Oakley was one of the most

admired American women of her time.

She was a spectacular markswoman

who could shoot cigars out of the

mouths of astonished men.

from the reservation and played hide-and-seek with the American

soldiers. Photos of the elusive Apaches, always clutching their

rifles, were displayed in most American newspapers, and a good

deal of sympathy went to the Indians. Fearing a growth of such

sympathy, the U.S. government sent General Nelson Miles to

replace Crook. Miles hunted down and captured Geronimo,

who was taken to a prison in Florida. Later released, Geronimo

spent the rest of his life on a reservation, admired as a potent

symbol of Indian resistance.

The Indian Wars ended by 1890. There was no more native

resistance to the Americans on the Great Plains. But the repeating

rifle continued to be important to sportsmen and hunters. The

famous hunter Buffalo Bill Cody once wrote an advertisement

for the 1873 Winchester Rifle: “I have been using and have

thoroughly tested your latest improved rifle. Allow me to say

that I have tried and used nearly every kind of gun made in

the United States, and for general hunting, or Indian fighting,

I pronounce your improved Winchester the boss.”21

What Cody did not say was what he had done with that

Winchester. Cody earned the nickname “Buffalo Bill” by killing

about 4,000 buffalo over a four-month period. He did so by

riding close to the buffalo herd, taking chances with his life, and

shooting down scores of buffalo with his repeating rifle.

As heinous as this may sound, things became even worse.

By about 1875, large numbers of buffalo hunters, few of them

with Cody’s individualism of spirit, rode safely in railroad cars

and fired on herds of buffalo. In 1870, there were about eight

million buffalo on the plains; by 1885, the number had been

reduced to less than 50,000. This represents one of the most

vicious killing sprees ever perpetrated by Western humankind

against animal life.22

The Wild West 53

The biblical saying that a “prophet is not without honor

except in his own country” has some merit as concerns the

inventors of the first machine guns. A Southerner made the

first; he tried to sell it to the Union, but was rebuffed. A

Northerner made the second; he obtained his success in

Great Britain, rather than the United States.

Richard Jordan Gatling was the first of these men.

Born in North Carolina in 1818, Gatling was the son of a

prosperous farmer. He became an inventor in his early

twenties when he experimented with a screw propeller

and patented a device for planting rice. Gatling moved

north to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1844. There he patented a

hemp-breaking machine and a steel plow before the Civil

War began.

When the great conflict came, Gatling turned his attention

to guns. In November 1862, he patented a rapid-fire gun,

which was the world’s first true machine gun. The weapon

54

Arms for EmpireWhatever happens we have got the

Maxim Gun and they have not.

—Hillaire Belloc, The Modern Traveler,published in 1898

6AT

ISSU

E Between 1820 and 1914, Great Britain dominated theoceans of the world. Her navy was supreme. At the sametime, some 200,000 soldiers managed to conquer andcontrol native populations from Australia to Canada.This chapter examines some of the inventions and gunsthat allowed the British, and then the Americans, tobecome successful imperialists.

was cranked by hand; it had six barrels, which revolved around

a central axis, and it fired cartridges that were dropped from

a drum on top of the gun. The Gatling gun fired 350 rounds

per minute, at a time when most expert riflemen were shooting

no more than six rounds per minute.

One wonders what might have happened had Gatling

offered his gun to the Confederacy. But living in St. Louis,

he was now a Northerner and he took his invention to the

U.S. Army. The chief of ordnance, General James Ripley, was

already being besieged by promoters of new gun types and

new caliber types. Ripley declined to test the Gatling gun,

believing it would further confuse the state of the Union’s

ordnance supply.

The U.S. Navy purchased a few Gatling guns in 1862, and

the Union force occupying New Orleans ordered a number

that saw action in the spring of 1864. But by and large, the

Gatling gun’s tremendous potential went unused by either

North or South during the Civil War.

Not until the war was over did the gun receive any true

recognition. The U.S. Army tested the weapon in 1865, and

ordered 100 guns in 1866. Fifty of these were to be with a

one-inch caliber and the other 50 with a .50 caliber. These

100 guns were seldom used during the next 30 years. The

Gatling gun did not see real service until the beginning of

the Spanish-American War in 1898. Its performance was

described by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt (later president of

the United States) in his book about the Spanish-American

War, Rough Riders. Roosevelt commanded three regiments

that were assigned to capturing San Juan Hill in the mountains

above Santiago, Cuba, on July 1, 1898. A handful of Gatling

guns had been issued to Roosevelt’s men; not knowing

much about the weapons, the officer in charge, Lieutenant

Parker, placed them near the front of the American lines.

Roosevelt wrote:

Arms for Empire 55

Suddenly, above the crackling of the carbines, rose a peculiardrumming sound, and some of the men cried, “The Spanishmachine-guns!” Listening, I made out that it came from the flatground to the left, and jumped to my feet, smiting my hand onmy thigh, and shouting aloud with exultation, “It’s the Gatlings,men, our Gatlings!” Lieutenant Parker was bringing his fourGatlings into action, and shoving them nearer and nearer thefront. Now and then the drumming ceased for a moment; thenit would resound again, always closer to San Juan Hill, whichParker, like ourselves, was hammering to assist the


The Gatling gun was a rapid-fire machine gun that fired 350 rounds per minute.

It had six barrels that revolved around a central axis and fired cartridges

that were dropped from a drum into the firing chamber. It was used by

Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War.

infantry attack. Our men cheered lustily. We saw much of

Parker after that, and there was never a more welcome

sound than his Galtings as they opened. It was the only

sound which I ever heard my men cheer in battle.23

Roosevelt and his men won the central part of the

mountains over Santiago that day. The U.S. forces closed in

rapidly after that, and Santiago soon surrendered, bringing

to a close what many called the “splendid little war.” The

fame Roosevelt engendered by leading his Rough Riders

helped him win the vice-presidential nomination in 1900,

and on the death of President William McKinley, he became

president of the United States.

The stellar performance at the Battle for San Juan Hill

inspired the U.S. Army to take a closer look at the weapon

that it had possessed for slightly more than 30 years. But the

Gatling was now obsolete; it had been outpaced by two other

weapons, the Hotchkiss and the Maxim. Richard Gatling died

in New York City in 1903. His numerous other inventions

had produced successes and a modest income for the prolific

inventor, but the Gatling gun had been shelved during the

Civil War, only to re-emerge in 1898, when it was no longer

state-of-the-art.

Hiram Maxim was born in Sangerville, Maine, in 1840.

After an adventurous youth, which included travel in eastern

Canada, Maxim went to work making guns for an uncle in

Fitchburg, Massachusetts. This employment did not alter

Maxim’s need for novelty in his life; he was a prolific inventor

whose first patent was for a hair-curling iron.

After the Civil War, Maxim experimented in the up-and-

coming electric light industry. He competed with Thomas

Edison in designs and for patents, and later served as chief

engineer of the U.S. Electric Light Company. He and Edison

knew each other well and were perennial rivals, with Edison

making the best of the situation and receiving the highest

Arms for Empire 57

prizes. In 1881, Maxim went to London to exhibit his electricalworks, and he decided to remain in England.

Gun manufacture soon called to Maxim. AlthoughEurope was at peace in 1881 and would remain so for severaldecades to come, Maxim foresaw that Europeans woulddemand a new and more vigorous gun for future wars.Whether he knew anything of the Gatling gun or not, Maximput his attention to making a new type of machine gun. As he


Hiram Maxim poses with the machine gun he invented in 1884. This weapon

was smaller and lighter than most guns of its time. By 1890, it became

standard issue for soldiers serving in Britain’s vast colonial empire.

he began to develop his new design, Maxim visited the Henry

Rifled Barrel Company in London. The old superintendent

tried to discourage Maxim from his new work, saying,

“Thousands of men for many years have been working on

guns; and there are hundreds of failures every year; many

engineers and clever men imagine that they can make a gun,

but they never succeed; they are all failures, so you had

better drop it, and not spend a single penny on it. You don’t

stand a ghost of a chance in competition with regular gun

makers — stick to electricity.” 24 Maxim replied, “I am a

totally different mechanic from any you have ever seen before —

a different breed.” 25

Maxim spent about two years developing his new gun. In

the spring of 1884, he displayed the gun and its spectacular

rate of fire to a number of admiring observers, one of

whom was Albert, the Prince of Wales. But one of the finest

compliments came from an American, Mr. Francis Pratt of

Pratt and Whitney in Hartford, Connecticut. Upon arriving

in London and seeing the gun, Pratt declared:

If anyone had told me that it would be possible to make a

gun that would pull a cartridge belt into position, pull a

loaded cartridge out of it, move it in front of the barrel,

thrust it into the barrel, close the breech in a proper

manner, cock the hammer, pull the trigger, fire off the

cartridge, extract the empty shell and throw it out of the

mechanism, feed a new cartridge into position, and do

all these things in the tenth part of a second, I would

not have believed it. I would not have believed it if

Mr. Whitney had told me — no, I would not have believed

it if my wife had told me. But now I have seen it done

with my own eyes.26

Maxim’s gun was soon refined; it became smaller and

lighter than most guns of its type. By about 1890 it had

Arms for Empire 59

become standard equipment for the British army. In 1898,

the same year that Gatling’s guns won their first true

approval in the Spanish-American War, Maxim’s guns had

a major trial by fire in the Anglo-Egyptian campaign in

the Sudan.

About 12 years earlier, a religious leader in the Sudan

had named himself the Mahdi (“Messiah”). The Mahdi had

organized Sudanese tribesmen into a new fighting force that

included cavalry, artillery, and infantry. The Mahdi had

defeated the British at Khartoum, but had died two years

later. Now his successor and a large Sudanese army faced a

British and Egyptian force led by General Horatio Kitchener.

One of the British lieutenants on the force was the young

Winston Spencer Churchill, later to become one of the most

famous of all British political leaders.

Churchill, who was a journalist as well as an officer,

described the climactic Battle of Omdurman on September 2,

1898, which occurred just two months and one day after

the Battle of San Juan Hill. Churchill estimated the enemy’s

strength at about 60,000 men, most of them on horseback.

Accurately assessing the difference between the two forces,

he wrote, “If there was one arm in which the Arabs were

beyond all comparison inferior to their adversaries, it was in

guns. Yet it was with this arm that they opened their attack.”

Churchill watched with fascination and horror as the

Mahdi’s forces began a traditional cavalry attack straight

across the open desert plain. He later recalled:

The ranges were known. It was a matter of machinery. The

more distant slaughter passed unnoticed, as the mind was

fascinated by the impending horror. I could see it coming.

In a few seconds swift destruction would rush on these

brave men. They topped the crest and drew out into full

view of the whole army. Their white banners made them

conspicuous above all. As they saw the camp of their


enemies, they discharged their rifles with a great roar ofmusketry and quickened their pace, and I was alarmed tosee a solitary British officer, Lieutenant Conolly, attachedto the 21st, galloping across their front fifty feet belowthem, but at only a hundred yards’ distance. He had beensent out to take a final look behind the hill. Fortunately hereturned in safety, and with the necessary information.

Arms for Empire 61

This photograph, taken in 1885, shows British troops boarding a military

transport ship bound for the Sudan in Africa to fight against rebellious

Sudanese tribesmen. Winston Churchill, working as a journalist during the

campaign, reported on one of the battles where lines of tribesmen, armed

with spears and primitive rifles, faced British troops armed with Maxim guns.

For a moment the White Flags advanced in regular order,

and the whole division crossed the crest and were exposed.

Forthwith the gunboats, the 32nd British Field Battery, and

other guns from the zeriba opened on them. I was but 400

yards away, and with excellent glasses could almost see the

faces of the Dervishes who met the fearful fire. About twenty

shells struck them in the first minute. Some burst high in the

air, others exactly in their faces. Others, again, plunged into

the sand and, exploding, dashed clouds of red dust, splinters,

and bullets amid their ranks. The white banners toppled over

in all directions. Yet they rose again immediately, as other

men pressed forward to die for the Mahdi’s sacred cause and

in the defense of the successor of the True Prophet of the

Only God. It was a terrible sight, for as yet they had not hurt

us at all, and it seemed an unfair advantage to strike thus

cruelly when they could not reply. Nevertheless, I watched the

effect of the fire most carefully from a close and convenient

position. About five men on the average fell to every shell: and

there were many shells. Under their influence the mass of

the “White Flags” dissolved into thin lines of spear men

and skirmishers, and came on in altered formation and

diminished numbers, but with unabated enthusiasm. And now,

the whole attack being thoroughly exposed, it became the duty

of the cavalry to clear the front as quickly as possible, and leave

the further conduct of the debate to the infantry and the

Maxim guns. All the patrols trotted or cantered back to their

squadrons, and the regiment retired swiftly into the zeriba,

while the shells from the gunboats screamed overhead and

the whole length of the position began to burst into flame and

smoke. Nor was it long before the tremendous banging of the

artillery was swelled by the roar of musketry.27

The Battle of Omdurman was a slaughter rather than a

real conflict. British technology, whether it was in the hands

of British regulars or Egyptian soldiers, devastated the native


peoples at Omdurman. This was one of the last battles of the

British Empire during Queen Victoria’s reign, and it showed

yet again how powerful and decisive the repeating rifle had

become. Valor and courage counted for little against the

killing bullets of the repeating rifle. Europeans knew this

well, and yet they would somehow believe that they could

fight each other in the future with impunity. Time would

display how wrong they were.

Arms for Empire 63

On June 28, 1914, the Austrian Archduke and his wife toured the

city of Sarajevo in an open car. Franz Ferdinand was the heir to

the Austrian throne, but his uncle, Emperor Franz Josef, who

had ruled since 1848, was still alive and healthy. Thus, Franz

Ferdinand and his wife Sophie probably anticipated having to wait

a few years more before they ascended the throne as emperor

and empress of Austria-Hungary and the many provinces

controlled by those two nations. Among these was Serbia.

In the midst of the crowd that lined the streets to see the

archduke and the archduchess stood a man named Gavrilo

Princip. With no warning, Princip, a Serbian nationalist, stepped

forward and fired several shots from a Browning revolver,

mortally wounding the archduke and archduchess. The

death of these two individuals would soon lead to countless

other deaths.28

War was not inevitable. The Great Powers might have

arranged a peace conference where wrongs, as perceived by

Serbian nationalists, might have been addressed. But there was

64

The Great WarWaves of infantry going down like corn

before the scythe of the machine gun.

—John Keegan, quoted in A Walk through the Twentieth

Century with Bill Moyers

7AT

ISSU

E No one — British, French, German, or American —expected the First World War to be so deadly. Newtypes of weapons and new types of tactics meant thathundreds of thousands, indeed millions, of youngmen would perish in the four years of war. This chapterlooks at the new weapons and tactics that causedthe carnage.

no peace conference, and the European nations drifted into war

at the end of July 1914.

In the beginning, the First World War pitted Germany and

Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers) against Russia, France,

Belgium, and Britain (the Allied Powers).

Each side believed that it would defeat the other with

an enormous concentration of men and matériel. This was

especially true in Russia, which had by far the largest army, and

which could call up reserves from as far away as Siberia. But

other nations, including France, Britain, and Germany, were

guilty of the same self-deception. Everyone, it seemed, believed

that the war would be over in six months, and every country

expected that its troops would be victorious.

One of the few realists was Lord Grey, the British Foreign

Minister. When war was declared in August 1914, he is said to

have remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we

shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”29

These were the lights of peace, of scientific advance for

peaceful purposes, and of brotherhood among Europeans. The

Great Peace now gave way to the Great War.

For the first month of the war, the Germans had some

legitimate expectation of success. They marched swiftly through

Belgium and angled down into France, headed for Paris. Mean-

while, a major French offensive against central Germany failed

dismally, thwarted by German machine guns and barbed wire.

But the Germans were also overconfident. At the First Battle

of the Marne in September 1914, the French used the new rapid-

fire guns to halt the German offensive, and at one point, when it

seemed the Germans might break through, 5,000 taxicabs

brought reinforcements from Paris. Thus, the Von Schlieffen

Plan, Germany’s seemingly foolproof design for a quick victory

in the West, was defeated by the unlikely combination of

machine guns and taxicabs.

Very soon after the Battle of the Marne, military action on

the western front turned into a stalemate between two opposing

The Great War 65

forces, which used all the techniques, machines, men, andarmaments available to them. The Germans on one side, andthe British and French on the other, dug deep trenches, set upmachine guns near the tops of those trenches, and rigged thearea between their lines and the enemy lines with barbed wireand explosives. The 600-yard area between the enemy lines wascalled “No-Man’s Land” and very few men who ventured intothat area lived to tell the tale.

The British weapon of choice was the Vickers machine gun,while the Germans and French favored the Hotchkiss. Maximguns were also dispersed throughout the lines of both sides. Theresults were terrible.

In 1915, both sides believed that a major push throughenemy trenches was possible. The Germans struck first at thecity of Verdun.

Defending Verdun became an article of faith for the French


French soldiers shoot at German soldiers during the Battle of

the Marne in 1914, one of the first major battles of World War I.

Ironically, the rapid-fire machine guns pictured here were

captured from the German troops that are being fired upon.

nation. General Henri Petain declared, “Il ne passeront pas”

(“They shall not pass”), and France committed hundreds of

thousands of men to the effort of stopping the Germans. Both

sides used machine guns and repeating rifles at close range.

When the fighting petered out toward the end of 1915, the

combined losses were one million men who were either killed,

wounded, or missing—about 20 times the number of those

reported killed, wounded, and missing during the Spanish-

American War. No Frenchman or German who was at Verdun

was ever the same again. Indeed, the French were too battle-

shocked to participate in a major offensive against the Central

Powers in 1916 and it was left to the British.

British General Douglas Haig believed that his men could

break through along the line of the Somme River in northern

France. Haig had close to a million men, hundreds of thousands

of repeating weapons, and a few of the new tanks that were

making their presence felt in warfare. He planned his offensive

for the first of July 1916.

British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand troops went

into action that day. They made minimal progress, but nearly

56,000 men were reported killed, wounded, or missing in just

one day’s action. The British army lost more men in the Battle of

Somme than it had in all of the wars it had fought between 1860

and 1914.30

No British soldier or officer who was present at the Battle

of the Somme ever forgot the carnage of that day. No British

commander and no British soldier who was at the Somme ever

felt the same about war, glory, British pride, or the British

Empire. It made an indelible impression on the minds and the

psyches of the British people for the next two decades.

Unlike the Americans who had been horrified by the casualties

suffered in the Civil War, the British, French, and Germans had

no overriding purpose, such as freeing slaves, to make their war

seem worthwhile or meaningful. Without such motivation, the

war was seen for what it was: civilization gone insane.

The Great War 67

As horrible as things were on the western front, they wereeven worse on the eastern front where Germany and Austria-Hungary fought Czarist Russia. The distances were greater onthe eastern front, and without trenches and barbed wire toprevent movement, both sides engaged in cumbersome maneuversthat cost millions of lives.

When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, theRussian psychic Rasputin sent a series of urgent letters to CzarNicholas II, warning that war would be a disaster for Russia.Rasputin had been wrong many times before, but perhaps theczar should have listened on this occasion, for the war proved tobe his undoing. Nicholas lost his throne and Imperial Russia,which had existed for several centuries, collapsed.

The Russian steamroller, as it was portrayed in newspapercartoons, faltered against the Germans at the twin battles ofTannenberg and Masurian Lakes, both fought in 1914. From


One of the deadliest battles of World War I, the Battle of the

Somme, took place in 1916. British general Douglas Haig

commanded close to 1,000,000 men armed with repeating rifles

and one of the newest military inventions to appear on the

world’s battlefields — the tank.

that time on, the fighting on the eastern front was almost

one-sided, with the Russians perpetually on the defensive.

The Germans, with their rapid-fire rifles and machine guns,

slaughtered the Russians who were often equipped with matériel

of 1870s vintage. Some Russian soldiers did not have proper

shoes or winter clothing, and Russia suffered about four million

casualties in the first three years of war.

By March 1917, the Russian people had had enough. The czar

was overthrown in a quick revolution in St. Petersburg, and a new

provisional government was created. That provisional government,

led by Alexander Kerensky, was then overthrown by Vladimir Illyich

Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, in October of the same year.

Both the popular revolution against the czar and the

Bolshevik revolution against Kerensky’s government were carried

out by relatively small numbers of men, armed with repeating

weapons. While it is true that the czarist government had lost

all popular support by March 1917, the ease with which the

revolution was carried out shows how a small band of well-

armed men could take over a capital city and then subdue an

entire country. Kerensky’s defeat and the takeover by Lenin and

the Bolsheviks demonstrated that speed and accuracy, both in

movement and use of guns, were critical factors in the success of

the two Russian revolutions of 1917.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks made peace with Germany in

January 1918. Peace came at a great price; the Germans claimed

one-third of European Russia (Russia east of the Ural Mountains).

Germany was then able to transfer many of her troops to the

western front, where she intended to make a last effort against

the remaining Allied Powers.

There was need for the Germans to hurry. The United States

had entered the war on the side of the Britain, France, and Italy in

April 1917. It had taken some time for the Americans to gear up for

the war, but by the spring of 1918, a million American soldiers were

either in France or on their way. They carried with them the 1903

Springfield rifle, manufactured at Springfield Armory.

The Great War 69

The 1903 Springfield was a single-shot, bolt-action rifle.

Designed by the armory experts, the Springfield was a clip-

loading magazine rifle (magazine refers to the gun’s cartridge

holder). It was known for its sturdiness and durability. Carrying

their new Springfields, the Americans joined the conflict

along the western front in 1917 and 1918.31

Of course it was not only their weapons that made the

Americans so formidable. They were fresh, better fed, and

better equipped than their European counterparts. The word

“doughboy” came into circulation because of the well-fed

appearance of so many of the Americans. But their use of the

Springfield rifle was part of the equation that allowed them to

perform so well. The Americans triumphed in the Meuse-Argonne

Offensive of September and October 1918, and helped to bring

about the end of the war on November 11, 1918.


Alvin York

The best-known American hero of the First World War was a pacifist. Born inTennessee in 1887, Alvin York was a hunter, marksman, farmer, and black-smith before the war began. He did not support war and tried to register asa conscientious objector. But his request was denied, and he was assigned tothe 82nd U.S. Infantry.

The United States mounted the Battle of the Argonne Forest in easternFrance in September 1918. On October 8,York and his patrol of 16 men wereisolated and under enemy fire. Half of his men were dead or wounded, butYork outshot a German machine gun group, silenced 35 guns, killed about20 Germans, and brought another 132 in as prisoners. This was, beyonddoubt, the single most successful heroic action by an individual Americansoldier in the war.

York became a national hero when the Saturday Evening Post profiled himin 1919. Americans were thrilled to find a hero who reminded them ofthe legendary figures of earlier times. Like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett andothers, York was a man of the Appalachian Mountains, a simple man in acomplex world. York initially resisted publicity, but on the eve of the SecondWorld War, he agreed to allow a film about his wartime exploits to be made.Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper, was one of a number of patriotic filmscreated in the pre-World War II era.

A Browning pistol had sparked the First World War with theassassination of the Austrian archduke. It was the invention ofJohn Moses Browning. Browning was born in Ogden, Utah, in1855. The son of Mormon parents, he made his first gun at theage of 13 and later founded his own company. He patented hisfirst breech-loading rifle in 1879, and the Browning automaticpistol in 1911. Under the pressure of the war, he produced theBrowning machine gun in 1917 and the Browning automaticrifle in 1918.

The Browning rifle and machine gun came too late toinfluence the First World War, but they heralded the lead thatU.S. armsmakers now had over their European competitors. TheUnited States had replaced Great Britain as the world’s foremostindustrial and financial power by 1920; the same was true interms of military weaponry.

The Great War 71

On February 17, 1919, Sergeant Alvin York of Tennessee surveys

the Argonne Forest, France, where he and 17 other Allied soldiers

captured over a 100 Germans on October 8, 1918. Many small

skirmishes were fought in the forests of Europe during World War I,

ending in death or imprisonment for some men; others, like York,

became famous heroes.

The gangster era began in earnest in the early 1920s. Several

factors contributed to the sudden rise in lawlessness. Among them

were Prohibition, growing urbanization, and the availability of

new submachine guns.

The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went

into effect on January 17, 1920. Suddenly it was illegal to make

or sell alcoholic beverages anywhere in the United States.

The amendment had been supported and driven home by forces

within American society that decried the new urbanization and

wanted to see a return to rural and Protestant values. The results

were just the opposite.

Bootlegging became the booming business of the 1920s.

Gangsters appeared in major American cities, expanding their

enterprises from prostitution and gambling to drink and

spreading alcohol everywhere. Speakeasies appeared in cities

around the nation.

Chicago was the center of bootlegging activities and it

became the center of gangster culture in the United States.

72

Gangsters and G-Men

Gee, but I’d like to be a G-ManAnd go Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

— Popular song in 1930s

8AT

ISSU

E Prohibition went into effect in 1920. A decade of lawbreakingensued in many American cities. Notorious criminals likeAl Capone emerged. A new generation of lawmen, led byJ. Edgar Hoover, opposed those criminals. This chapterlooks at the gangsters, the government agents, the weaponrythey used, and the hold they still have on the popularimagination today.

Americans first learned about gangster culture from the shortand decidedly unromantic lives of Bonny and Clyde, but withina year or two, major gangs and groups of thugs were operating inmost American cities. They had a decided advantage in theirweaponry; the gangs used the “Tommy gun.”

Designed and patented by Brigadier General John Thompson,

Gangsters and G-Men 73

Prohibition, which outlawed the sale of alcohol, contributed to an era of

lawlessness in the United States in the 1920s. Gangsters and police officers,

armed with submachine guns, fought for control of cities. Here, a group of

policemen empty barrels of illegally brewed beer confiscated from bootleggers.

the “Tommy gun” had been invented to break the deadlock of

trench warfare in the First World War. But gangsters in Chicago,

New York, and Los Angeles latched on to the new weapon as

their gun of choice. A determined gangster could shoot 800

rounds a minute, and could conceivably stand off an entire

police force.32

The increase in gun violence around the nation led

Americans to discuss restrictions on guns for the first time. In

1920, the British House of Commons had passed, by a vote of

254 to 6, the first national Firearms Act of that country. The

law severely restricted the use of any type of guns in Britain,

and gave police departments great discretionary powers to

whom they might or might not award permits.33

Some Americans believed the time had come for gun

regulation in the United States. Congress had outlawed the

use of alcohol; why not do the same for guns? But the most

that the federal government was willing to do was to ban

the use of the federal mails for the delivery of guns. This

obstacle was quickly circumvented by gun suppliers, who

simply used private delivery services instead of the U.S.

Postal Service.

Alphonse Capone, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899,

was the archenemy of the lawmen. In 1924, Capone became

the leader of most of the organized crime elements in

Chicago. Capone’s power increased throughout the decade,

and on February 14, 1929, he authorized the brutal execution

of seven members of a rival gang. The Saint Valentine’s Day

Massacre, as it was immediately labeled, was described in

The New York Times the following day:

Chicago gangland leaders observed Valentine’s Day with

machine guns and a stream of bullets and as a result seven

members of the George (Bugs) Moran-Dean O’Banion,

North Side gang are dead in the most cold-blooded massacre

in the history of this city’s underworld.34



One of the most famous gangsters of the 1920s was Al Capone, the organized

crime boss of Chicago. His machine gun-armed henchmen killed rival gangster

leaders in the infamous Valentine’s Day Massacre to protect Capone’s “turf.”

The victims were placed up against a wall of a garage and cut

down by machine gun fire.

Public outrage was enormous. There was no sympathy for

the gang members who had been executed; rather many were

appalled that the gangs were now completely out of control.

Herbert Hoover, who became president of the United States

just three weeks later, vowed to subdue the criminal elements in

American society. Fortunately, Hoover and his administration

were able to benefit from the efforts of the Bureau of Investigation

(it was not called the FBI until 1935), which had been working

on gang cases for about five years.

J. (John) Edgar Hoover became chief of the Bureau of

Investigation in 1924, the same year that Al Capone became

master of the Chicago mob. Hoover entered an organization

badly shaken by the excesses of his predecessor, Mitchell

Palmer. Under Palmer’s leadership, the bureau had rounded

up hundreds of aliens and suspected Communist sympathizers

in 1920. The “Red Scare” of 1920 had discredited the bureau’s

activities; Hoover was determined to bring the agency back

to respectability.

Hoover was a masterful bureaucrat, both in the best and

in the worst senses of the word. He excelled at organization,

commanded loyalty, and was determined to make America a

safer place. These public virtues made Hoover one of nation’s

most admired men, and he continued to lead the bureau

(and then the FBI) until his death in 1972.

But there was another side of Hoover, a deeply controlling

side, that caused concern in those Americans who knew him

well. Hoover was so intent on creating a crime-free America

that he began to trample on civil liberties.

Few average Americans had qualms about Hoover in the

1920s or 1930s. His vigorous efforts, his creation of the finger-

printing system, and his relentless pursuit of criminals made

him an outstanding hero. His numerous agents became symbols

of what it was to be a good American. A popular song of the


time attests to this while at the same time drawing attention to

the agency’s abuse of power:

Gee, but I’d like to be a G-Man

And go Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Just like Dick Tracy, what a “he-man”

And go Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

I’d do as I please, act high-handed and regal

’Cause when you’re a G-Man, there’s nothing illegal.35

Hoover and his G-Men (“Government Men”) pursued their

cases with vigor, but also with painstaking research. When they

found they could pin nothing on Al Capone, one of the bright

minds in the bureau suggested they look into tax evasion.

Capone was arrested in 1931, and in 1932, he was found guilty

of tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He served

nine years in several locations—Alcatraz among them—and

was then released for reasons of health. By then his grip on the

Chicago underworld had disappeared.

Throughout the 1930s, J. Edgar Hoover and his agents

fulfilled their image of always getting “their man.” The bureau

became the most admired of all government agencies during the

decade. Part of the goodwill created toward law enforcement was

channeled into the idea of a gun regulation law for the United

States. By early 1934, Congress was in the midst of a major

debate about how the law should be shaped. Then the National

Rifle Association made its weight felt for the first time.

The NRA had been formed in 1871 by a handful of retired

Civil War officers. Led by Colonel William Church and Captain

George Wingate, the NRA began as an organization to promote

better marksmanship through shooting contests. New York

State provided most of the funding for the NRA in its first

decade, but then withdrew funding. The NRA languished and

nearly disappeared before it made a return around the turn of

the twentieth century.36


Theodore Roosevelt, a hero of the Spanish-American War,

became president in 1901. Roosevelt had always been a strong gun

enthusiast, first as a cattle rancher, then as a soldier. He became

a member of the NRA and helped develop the first national

shooting agency. By about 1910, NRA membership had risen to

3,500. By 1934, there were 10 times as many NRA members.


Theodore Roosevelt

Few presidents, or few men for that matter, have contributed as much to thepositive image of guns as Theodore Roosevelt. Whether as a rancher, asoldier, or a big-game hunter, Roosevelt showed his enthusiasm for guns ina way that increased Americans’ acceptance of those weapons.

Born in New York City in 1858, Roosevelt was a sickly child and sufferedfrom asthma. In his teenage years he rejected the idea of being an invalidand became an advocate of a strenuous lifestyle that included boxing,gymnastics, and rifle shooting.

Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for the Winchester 1876 Rifle was well known. Ascolonel of the regiment of Rough Riders, he helped to popularize the Gatlinggun and the need for a new combat rifle to equal the Mauser, used by theSpanish in the Spanish-American War.

After the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, Theodore Rooseveltbecame president. He lent his support to the National Rifle Association andstrengthened the relationship between the federal government and thearms industry. Roosevelt played a role in making the 1903 Springfield riflethe weapon of choice for the U.S. Army.

Roosevelt’s presidency ended in 1909, but he remained very much in thepublic eye. He went on safari in Africa, displaying his pistols, carbines, andrifles to newspapermen. Roosevelt’s greatest moment came in 1912, whenhe ran for president as the nominee of the “Bull Moose” Party. As he wasabout to give a speech, Roosevelt was shot by a deranged man with a pistol.Roosevelt continued his speech for another hour with the bullet in his chest,telling the crowd that “it takes more than [a bullet] to kill a bull moose.”He finally agreed to be taken to a hospital.

Roosevelt recovered from his wound, but did not win the presidency thatyear. He became an ardent spokesman for those who wanted the UnitedStates to enter the First World War. When he died in 1919, American gunenthusiasts mourned the passing of one of their strongest supporters.

The NRA leadership called out all the support that it couldmuster to oppose the gun regulation of 1934. As a result, theNational Firearms Act of 1934 was much less severe on gunowners and gun companies than it was on criminals. The legislationincreased the number of offenses that could be tried as federaloffenses, but did little to prevent the manufacture or sale of guns.


Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. An

avid sportsman and hunter, he went on safari to Africa to shoot “big game”

like the rhinoceros in this photograph. Today, worldwide conservation move-

ments have outlawed big game hunting in many African countries to protect

endangered species.

Throughout the 1930s, Americans were more concerned with

domestic than with foreign affairs. The crisis brought on by the

Great Depression overrode concerns about what was happening

in Europe. But by about 1936, Americans realized that three

major totalitarian dictatorships had arisen: Hitler’s Germany,

Mussolini’s Italy, and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Each of these dictatorships relied on the strength of its

military and police forces. The German Nazis, Italian Fascists,

and Russian Communists were quick to see the potential of the

new military weaponry that had emerged after the First World

War. Using machine guns and tanks, a relatively small military

force was able to subdue and rule a large population.

Meanwhile, the major democracies had embraced disarma-

ment. The British and French, in particular, considered World War I

to be the “war to end all wars.” The British and French were, there-

fore, no longer effective deterrents to dictatorships on the continent

80

The Arsenal of Democracy

In my opinion, the M-1 Rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised.

—General George Patton, 1945

9AT

ISSU

E In the Second World War, Americans and Russians broughtdown the German war machine. The Americans used theM-1 Rifle, developed at Springfield Armory. The Russiansused an assortment of rifles, but when the war ended, theydeveloped the AK-47 rifle. The two weapons—the M-1 andthe AK-47—and the men that carried them confrontedeach other during the decades of the cold war. This chapterexamines the inventors and the conflicts in which theweapons were used.

of Europe. Fortunately, Americans had a leader who thought

differently about the matter.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, like his distant cousin

Theodore Roosevelt, had always been interested in foreign affairs.

Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. He worked to combat

the Great Depression, but he also saw the danger posed by the

Fascist and Communist nations. But even a president as popular

as Roosevelt was unable to stir Americans to do much about this

danger during the mid-1930s. Americans were in a decidedly

isolationist mood. Not until the autumn of 1939, when Hitler

and Stalin carved up Poland, did the United States really begin

to pay attention to the totalitarian regimes in Europe.

Fortunately, American gun makers had not been idle. The

1930s were a time of slow but steady growth for American arms

manufacturing. Production increased greatly soon after Europe

went to war in September 1939, but the United States was still far

from doing all that it could.

Some military analysts argued that the day of the rifle—

whether it was a repeater or not—was now over. Adolf Hitler’s

German army had introduced a new type of warfare, known as

Blitzkrieg (“Lightning War”), which seemed to bypass the old

emphasis on either the rifle or the machine gun. The tank,

fighter plane, and jeep were the new technologies of the Second

World War. But Franklin Roosevelt and his military planners

believed that the rifle would still play a major role once the

United States entered the war.

The timing was not of President Roosevelt’s choosing. There

were formidable political forces arrayed against intervention,

and as late as June 1941, at least 50 percent of the American

public had doubts about playing any role in the war. But the

Japanese bomber attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941

ended any such doubts or misgivings, and the United States

entered the war with a will and with a vengeance.

American soldiers carried a new weapon into World War II:

the M-1 rifle. It was designed by John Garand of Springfield,

The Arsenal of Democracy 81

Massachusetts. Born in Quebec, Canada, Garand had moved tothe United States with his family at a young age. Fascinated byguns, and given to long periods of research and introspection,Garand turned all his attention to making a rifle better thaneither the Springfield 1903 or the Mauser, which the Germanshad used in the First World War.

Success did not come easily. To begin with, Garand was sopainstaking in his work that his rifle took longer to develop thanwas expected. Secondly, the U.S. Army experts were exception-ally picky in the 1920s. They believed that the 1903 Springfieldwas still better than anything their potential enemies had, and


John Garand displays one of the M-1 semi-automatic rifles he invented in

the years between the world wars. The rifle weighed close to nine pounds

and was 43-inches long. The M-1 was loaded with a clip that held seven

bullets. Each pull of the trigger released a bullet.

that there was no need to invest in a new gun unless it showed

exceptional prowess.

Garand demonstrated his new rifle to army experts in 1931.

They turned him down at first, and he had to return to the

drawing board. But in 1936 the gun was finally accepted.

Springfield Armory went into full-scale production of the M-1

rifle and never looked back. 37

The new rifle weighed 8.94 pounds and was 43 inches long.

Military manuals described it as a “gas-operated, clip-fed,

ait-colled, semi-automatic shoulder weapon.” Because the rifle

was semi-automatic, rather than fully automatic, a separate pull

of the trigger was needed for each release of a bullet. The M-1

was fed with a clip of seven bullets at a time, thereby following

in the tradition of the successful German Mauser. The single

most obvious feature of the M-1 was that the cartridge clip was

automatically ejected after the seventh bullet had been fired.

This happened from the squeeze of the trigger. The U.S.

infantryman then fed in the next clip of seven rounds.

The Second World War was much less predictable than the First

World War had been. Rather than long periods of trench warfare,

soldiers had to accommodate themselves to quick burst of “break-

through” action. Thus, the Americans soon copied the German

system of lightning warfare. The American tank, airplane, and jeep

seemed to be the key elements that allowed for American break-

throughs in North Africa, Italy, and northern Europe. But the

slogging, hard fighting still had to be performed by American troops

on the ground, and they were very happy to have the M-1 rifle.

In terms of tanks, the Germans usually had the advantage. The

German Tiger tank was faster and more deadly than the American

Sherman. The same was true of German bazookas and anti-tank

weapons. But in deadly fireshoots between groups of infantry, the

Americans held the trump card in the M-1. It was rugged, more

durable than the German Mauser 98K, which held five rounds of

ammunition, and fired a heavier slug. In most man-to-man

shootouts, Americans prevailed.38


In the Pacific, things were even less predictable. ThereAmericans faced a foe like none they had ever seen before. TheJapanese fought with great, even reckless, courage. The use of thekamikaze plane against U.S. ships was something Americans


U.S. soldiers armed with the M-1 rifle cautiously make their way through a

Dutch town they have recently entered, not knowing if they will encounter

resistance from German troops. The M-1 was rugged and more durable

than the German Mauser, but street fighting in cities was often

dangerously unpredictable.

simply could not prepare for. But, as in Europe, the American

infantryman usually prevailed with his M-1 rifle.

The Japanese had been copying and improving upon

American and European weaponry for three generations. But

nothing they had was equal to the M-1. Fighting in foxholes and

burrowing into caves was something at which the Japanese

excelled. The Americans caught up with them, however, through

sheer grit and through the superior performance of the M-1.

The greatest compliments to the gun came from generals Patton

and MacArthur.

General Patton, whose Seventh Army had copied the German

system of lightning war, wrote to the Ordnance Department,“In my

opinion, the M-1 Rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised.”

General MacArthur, who defeated the Japanese on one

Pacific island after another, wrote, “Under combat conditions it

operated with no mechanical defects and when used in foxholes

[it] did not develop stoppages from dust and dirt. It has been in

almost constant action for as much as a week without cleaning

or lubrication.”39

No higher praise could be given. The M-1 was clearly the

ideal infantry weapon for Americans in the Second World War.

The war in Europe ended in May 1945, and the war in

the Pacific ended in September of that same year. Without any

question, the United States had become the greatest economic

and military power in the world. The atomic bomb, used against

Japan in 1945, ensured that the United States would hold the

edge against the Russian Communists in any showdown. But

then came the surprises of the fall of 1949.

Early in September, Mao Tse-Tung completed the Communist

takeover of China. Suddenly there was a third superpower with

which to contend. Just three weeks later, President Harry Truman

made the grim announcement that the Soviet Union had success-

fully detonated its first atomic bomb. Now there were two nuclear

superpowers and a small club of other nations—including France

and China—that aspired to join the nuclear ranks.


The cold war began in earnest that month. From 1949 until

1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States was

engaged in an endless series of small conflicts that required the

use of the American infantryman. Whether those actions were

in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, or elsewhere, the American soldier

carried the new M-14 rifle.

Springfield Armory began to search for a new rifle as early

as 1944. The amazing success of the M-1 rifle convinced U.S.

Army experts that they needed to search out and find the new

generation of weapons before any of their adversaries. The M-14

was accepted by the army in 1957 and unveiled to small numbers


The Kalashnikov Rifle

The “AK-47” (short for Automatic Kalashnikov, year 1947 ) has become asmuch a part of the American vocabulary as the “M-1.” The Kalashnikov,though, has generally been carried by the foes of the United Statesaround the world. During the long cold war, Russian, North Korean, NorthVietnamese, and Cuban Communists often carried the AK-47 into battleagainst the M-1.

Mikhail Kalashnikov was born in the Altai Territory of Russia in 1919. Heserved in a Russian tank corps in World War II and was seriously wounded.While in the hospital, he developed his idea for a submachine gun. In1947, his assault rifle was determined to be the best offered to the Russiangovernment. By 1949, the Kalashnikov was adopted by the Soviet army; itsinventor received the Stalin Prize First Class.

The AK-47 has been used by the Soviet army since 1949 and has beenadopted by governments and terrorist organizations around the world.Some ordnance experts say that the AK-47 is not particularly special inand of itself, but is remarkable for the vast numbers that have beenproduced.

The AK-47 is especially popular in developing countries, where spare partsare difficult to obtain. Many people claim that the AK-47 seldom breaksdown, making the scarcity of spare parts unimportant. In some countries,the AK-47 has become so popular that newborn boys are often named“Kalash” in its honor.

of American servicemen in 1958. The M-14 was 44.14 inches inlength and weighed 8.7 pounds. The detachable magazine, orcartridge holder, held 20 rounds of ammunition.

The M-14 was designed to combat the new types of assaultrifles developed by the Germans toward the end of World War IIand the Russians in the years immediately following the war. In1947, the Russians came out with the AK-47, which stands forAutomatic Kalashnikov, year 1947assault rifle. Lighter than mostrifles of its type and easy to use, the AK-47 became the symbolof Russian aggression throughout the cold war.


The Automatic Kalashnikov assault rifle, better known as the AK-47, was

invented soon after the end of World War II by Mikhail Kalashnikov, shown

here at his home in the Ural Mountains in Russia. The AK-47 became the

symbol of Communist aggression during the cold war.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads,“A

well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,

the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

What controversies have been raised by those 27 words!

Twenty-first century Americans have strong and heated

opinions on the matter and there is a fairly equal division

between those who believe that the Constitution gives sacred

protection to the right of gun ownership and those who believe

that the Founding Fathers did not know enough about the

future—about the power of the repeating rifle and the machine

gun—to provide for the twenty-first century.

The amendment was passed in 1791, as part of the Bill of Rights.

At that time, there was little fear that the United States government

88

Hunters, Sportsmen,and Regulators

From my cold dead hands.

—Charlton Heston

10AT

ISSU

E Many Americans today have guns in their homes.Should they?Homicidal murders in the United States hit an all-time high

in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They declined during thesecond half of the decade.Those who favored gun control andthose who did not clashed repeatedly during the 1990s.At thebeginning of the new century, the presidential election wasrife with rumors of whether one candidate or the other wouldtake up the cause of gun control. This chapter shows thatissues of gun control have been discussed since the 1930s,andthat the gun control movement gained strength in the late1970s and early 1980s, especially in response to the assassi-nation of John Lennon and the attempted assassinations ofRonald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.

would oppress its own citizens; the concern was over Indian raids,

or dangers posed by invasions from Europe. Now, in the twenty-

first century, numerous Americans believe that their government is

so large and so powerful that they must retain their own weapons

as a last line of defense against possible tyranny.

Other Americans believe that the dangers posed by the

existence of so many guns in private hands outweigh any possible

advantages; they want the United States to become a nation with

fewer weapons. A ready-made example is often provided in

twenty-first century Britain; few people have guns, and many

police are still able to do their jobs with nightsticks.

The argument will continue. There is little likelihood of a reso-

lution, at least any time soon. Americans are among the world’s

most passionate people when it comes to their private possessions,

whether those possessions are cars, stereos, or automatic weapons.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in 1871

by three Civil War veterans. Deploring the poor quality of

marksmanship exhibited by the Union armies during the war,

these veterans envisioned the NRA as a club that would promote

marksmanship in shooting. 40

The organization nearly foundered several times in the

nineteenth century, but was revitalized in the twentieth century.

This revitalization was assisted by President Theodore Roosevelt, a

former soldier and an avid sportsman, who created the National

Board for the promotion of Rifle Practice in 1903. The NRA moved

its headquarters to Washington, D.C., in 1907, and strengthened

its ties to the government. Though the expression the “military-

industrial complex” would not be coined until the early 1960s,

there were some Americans who already thought that the relation-

ship between the NRA and the federal government was too cozy.

NRA membership rose slowly. In 1921, there were about

3,500 members, and by about 1935 there were over 30,000

members. The increase might be traced to social tensions such

as the controversy over Prohibition in the 1920s and the onset of

the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

Hunters, Sportsmen, and Regulators 89

If there was a decade in which American attraction to gunsincreased, it might be the 1930s. During those 10 years, colorfuloutlaws such as Al Capone virtually took over the government ofthe city of Chicago, and lawmen such as the G-Men becameheroes. Rather than discouraging Americans from gun ownership,the battles between lawmen and crooks seemed to increase theAmerican sentiment for weaponry.

Rural Americans had long been gun owners. As late as about1900, it was impractical and downright dangerous for peopleliving on the frontier not to have firearms. But as the UnitedStates became an increasingly urban nation (the 1920 censusshows that the country was divided about 50-50 between ruraland urban areas), city people began to acquire weapons as well.

Gun ownership soared during the 1950s. Peaceable,thoughtful Americans purchased guns so that they might feelsafer about their families and homes. Gun ownership, which had


NRA president Charlton Heston expresses his views on the

issue of gun control by proudly raising a rifle. The National Rifle

Association is an organization that supports the right of private

American citizens to own guns.

once been a mark of the frontiersman, suddenly became quite

normal throughout the country. Even wealthy upper-class

Americans adorned their mantelpieces with guns and claimed

that no one and no thing would take away from them this one

sense of security in such a dangerous world.

A series of assassinations in the 1960s made Americans look

again at their attitudes toward gun ownership. Lee Harvey Oswald

shot President Kennedy dead in 1963; Malcolm X was killed in

1965; and Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in 1968.

The 1960s were a time when gun ownership was held in

mixed regard. Young Americans, especially those who protested

against the Vietnam War, thought their parents were ridiculous

to hoard guns in an era when biological and nuclear weapons

held greater perils. The parents believed their sons and daughters

were foolhardy to trust to peace, love, and rock music at such

a time. The real turning point in American beliefs about gun

ownership came about as a result of urban riots that began in

the 1960s and continued into the 1990s.

There were inner-city race riots throughout the 1960s. The

first ones were in Watts, a poor section of Los Angeles. Other riots

broke out in Detroit, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey. These

riots demonstrated very clearly the pent-up anger of millions of

African-Americans who felt left out of the American system.

Great numbers of police and army troops were called in to

suppress these riots. The same thing occurred in 1971 to 1973,

when a group of Native American protesters held a mock siege

at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. These events, on the soil of the

American heartland, convinced many middle- and working-

class Americans that they needed guns, or, at least, that they had

to have the ability to buy guns.

Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States in

November 1980. Few men who have held the office have been

so consistently friendly toward the NRA or to the idea of gun

ownership. Reagan had been governor of California during the

late 1960s; he had become an inveterate opponent of those who


stood in the way of law and order. He seemed to be the perfect

president to back the NRA cause.41 But the mood of the country

started to change the year Reagan was elected: Two assassination

attempts and one successful assassination contributed to a

turn-around in the opinions of many American regarding gun

control. First, John Lennon, a former member of the popular

band The Beatles, was shot and killed in December 1980.

Just three months later, President Reagan was shot and

seriously wounded on March 30, 1981. Three other men were

also wounded: Press Secretary James Brady, a Secret Service

agent, and a Washington, D.C., policeman. Reagan was rushed to

the hospital, where he spent the next several weeks. Only his

relentless optimism made his convalescence appear easy to the

public; in actuality, Reagan had come very close to losing his life.

Then, in May 1981, Pope John Paul II, the most popular pope of

the century, was shot and wounded.

The assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan persuaded

many Americans that there were too many guns in the United

States, and criminals could get them too easily. Sarah Brady, wife

of Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, led the crusade for a

new gun control law.

James Brady had been wounded in the head; his wounds led

to paralysis, and he was confined to a wheelchair. His wife

worked, at first behind the scenes, and then more outwardly, to

promote the Brady Bill, which would require a waiting period to

purchase any gun.

The Brady Bill was first introduced in Congress in 1987. It

took until November 30, 1993 before it was signed into law,

due to the pressure exerted against it by the pro-gun lobby. 42

Surprisingly, former President Reagan, who was known for his

conservative political beliefs, came out in favor of the bill in its

later stages, helping it to become the law of the land.

In 2000, guns were a frequent subject of debate, as the nation

geared up for its first presidential election of the new millennium.

Republican George W. Bush (son of George H.W. Bush) and

Democrat Al Gore both argued they would defend the rights of


Americans to own and carry weapons. Almost as if it did notbelieve the two candidates, the NRA, led by actor Charlton Heston,made some dramatic statements about the needs of gun owners.In one speech, Heston loudly proclaimed that only “over [his]dead body” would his gun be taken from him.

George W. Bush won the election of 2000, and things appearedsecure for gun owners and the NRA until September 11, 2001,when Arab terrorists hijacked airplanes and flew them into theTwin Towers of the Manhattan’s World Trade Center. Americanswere horrified, and President Bush announced a new, unrelentingwar on the terrorists and on the states that harbored them.

One might think that the terrorist attack in New York Citymight have led Americans to be more sympathetic to gun owners,but the reverse proved true. Charlton Heston had to call short the


In 1981, a man named John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassi-

nate President Ronald Reagan. The president and his press sec-

retary, James Brady, were among the men wounded. After the

incident, Brady was paralyzed, and he and his wife worked to

promote a bill for stricter gun-control laws.

annual NRA conference in Denver, Colorado, when it became

apparent that national sentiment against the NRA ran high.

Currently, it seems as if the United States and the American

people will continue their dialogue concerning weapons. Both

points of view—the right to bear arms, and the need to regulate

those arms — obviously have some merit, but fashioning a

compromise will be difficult indeed. One of the weapons that

figures in this debate is the rifle.


The Rifle in the Movies

Movies are an important barometer of American public sentiment. Mostfilms that display rifles have done so in a positive manner, but there havebeen some notable exceptions, such as Annie, Get Your Gun and Bowling forColumbine.

During the Great Depression and the Second World War, rifles and themen who carried them were very positively portrayed in films. Gary Cooperstarred as Sergeant Alvin York, and John Wayne used rifles in numerousheroic roles. More recently, no one who has ever heard Clint Eastwood’sexpression “Go ahead. Make my day,” has ever forgotten it.

There were also films that glorified the early days of the American musketand then the Kentucky rifle. Films about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, theBattle at the Alamo, and Northwest Passage, a film depicting Major RobertRogers and his Rangers, are but a few examples. But if there was one filmthat showed both the beauty of the rifle and its stunning power to kill, thatfilm was Gettysburg.

In 1993, Martin Sheen delivers a memorable performance as Robert E. Lee,and thousands of period re-enactors make the three days at the realGettysburg battlefield come to life on the screen. The most telling scenedepicts Pickett’s Charge. While watching this hour-long scene, the viewerwants to yell at the Confederates to run up Cemetery Ridge, rather thanslowly march to their doom. Cannon fire chews up their ranks as theyapproach; men are hurled into the air by the power of the guns. Worst of all,when the Confederates do gain the ridge and come close to their enemies,they are met by withering rifle fire from groups of standing Union troops.The scene is one of horrible devastation, and one wonders how anyone,Yankee or Rebel, could have withstood the terrible carnage.

The repeating rifle has changed human history. Until about

1800, the ways in which one person could kill another were fairly

limited. There was the pistol, the sword, and the smoothbore

musket. To kill someone with any of these weapons required a

certain amount of premeditation.

After 1800, the appearance of the true rifles, with grooved

barrels, the percussion cap, and then the first repeating rifles in

the 1860s, made war and violence a very different matter. It was

now possible to kill at a faster rate.

The appearance of the Gatling and Maxim guns, and the use

of the new smokeless powder made the First World War a time

of great killing. Individual bravery became less and less relevant;

what mattered was having a greater amount of firepower.

The twentieth century introduced even more powerful

weapons, such as the M-1, AK-47, and M-14. One wonders

whether the Americans who fought at the Battle of Kings

Mountain—as Patriots or as Loyalists—would even recognize

the face of war in the twentieth century.

The repeating rifle helped to shape the deadly conflicts of

the twentieth century. The appearance of the rifle may even have

helped spur on the development of other and greater weapons,

such as the atomic bomb. For as one nation or tribe acquires a

new and deadly weapon, other nations and tribes will attempt to

do the same. The “arms race,” therefore, is influenced by many

factors and many weapons—one them being the repeating

rifle—but the net result is nearly always the same: an escalation

in weapons and their deadly powers.

Americans of the twentieth century were often asked what

technologies have shaped and altered their lives. Some of the

answers that came quickly to the tongue are the computer, the

automobile, and the telephone. One answer that did not usually

surface—unless the person being questioned was a war veteran—

was the repeating rifle. Yet the rifle, in its beauty and its destructive

power, is definitely one of the forces that shaped the twentieth

century. One can only wonder what role it may play in the

twenty-first.


ca. A.D. 1000 Gunpowder is first used in China.

ca. A.D. 1300 Reports of the use of gunpowder reach Europe.

1347 Cannon appear at the Siege of Crecy in the Hundred YearsWar between England and France.

1450–1480 The matchlock gun first appears in Europe.

ca. 1510 The wheel lock gun first appears in Europe.

1519–1522 Spaniards, led by Hernán Cortés, use guns to great effectin their conquest of Aztec Mexico.

ca. 1610 The first flintlock musket is invented in Normandy,France.

1609 Samuel de Champlain uses an arquebus on LakeChamplain.

1650 By this date, the flintlock has been adopted by mostEuropean armies.

1703 The British Brown Bess musket is introduced.

1725 German-American gunsmiths, working in Pennsylvania,develop the first American rifle, later to be known as theKentucky rifle.

1775 Daniel Boone and other frontiersmen settle in Kentucky.

1775 Colonel Daniel Morgan of Virginia leads companies ofriflemen to Boston, where they participate in the siege ofthe British-occupied town.

1776 British Major Patrick Ferguson demonstrates his newbreech-loading rifle to the British army experts.

1777 Ferguson and his special company of riflemen fight at theBattle of Brandywine Creek.

1780 Ferguson is surrounded and killed at Kings Mountain.

1783 The Revolutionary War ends. The American coloniesbecome independent.

1798 Eli Whitney obtains his first government contract to producemuskets at his factory near New Haven, Connecticut.

1807 Scottish Reverend Alexander Forsythe patents the percussion cap.

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1815 American riflemen led by Andrew Jackson win the Battleof New Orleans.

1836 Samuel Colt patents his first pistol.

1861 The Civil War begins. At first, both Union andConfederate troops use muzzle-loading guns almost exclusively.

1863 A new chief of ordnance for the Union army takes a keeninterest in the new breech-loading rifles.

1864 The repeating Henry rifles appear on the Union side.

1865 The Civil War ends when the Confederates surrender.

1873 The Winchester Company brings out its Model ’73. It issoon known as “the Gun that Won the West.”

1876 Custer’s troops are wiped out at Battle of Little Bighorn.

ca. 1880 The American buffalo is practically extinct.

1884 Hiram Maxim’s new machine gun becomes available.

1890s Smokeless powder appears in American and Europeanarsenals.

1898 The United States becomes an imperial power after itsvictory in the Spanish-American War.

1898 Theodore Roosevelt becomes a national hero because ofhis performance at the Battle of San Juan Hill.

1898 The British, led by Lord Kitchener, crush the Sudanese atthe Battle of Omdurman.

1903 The new ‘03 Springfield rifle introduced.

1907 Great Britain approves the Pistol Act.

1914 World War I begins with the assassination of ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand.

1917 The Browning rifle is adopted by American soldiers inWWI.

1920 The British government approves the first nationalfirearms act.

1921 General Thompson patents the Tommy submachine gun.

CHRONOLOGYOF

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97

1924 J. Edgar Hoover becomes director of the Bureau ofInvestigation.

1920s Mobs and organized crime flourish in many Americancities.

1927 A law is passed to prohibit the use of U.S. mail to deliver guns.

1929 The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurs in Chicago.

1934 The National Firearms Act becomes law in the UnitedStates.

1935 The Bureau of Investigation becomes the FBI.

1936 John Garrand’s M-1 Rifle is adopted by the U.S. Army.

1939 World War II begins in Europe.

1941 The United States enters the war.

1945 The war ends in complete victory for the Allies. GeneralsPatton and MacArthur recognize the value of the M-1.

1947 A Russian tank mechanic invents the AK-47.

1949 The cold war becomes more serious with the explosion ofthe first Russian atomic bomb.

1957 The M-14 is adopted by the U.S. Army.

1960s Three major assassinations take place against PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.U.S. soldiers in Vietnam use the M-14 rifle.

1970s The National Rifle Association grows in numbers andstrength.

1980 Former Beatle member John Lennon is shot and killed.

1981 President Ronald Reagan is wounded in an assassinationattempt. Three other men are wounded, including PressSecretary James Brady. Pope John Paul II is wounded inassassination attempt.

1987 The Brady Bill is introduced in U.S. Congress.

1988 The U.S. presidential election pits George H.W. Bush, amember of the NRA, against Michael Dukakis, a memberof the ACLU. Bush wins.

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1993 President Clinton signs the Brady Bill, which takes effectin March 1994.

1994 Gun control legislation efforts fade in the wake of anoverwhelming victory by Republicans in the off-year elections.

1995 The bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma Cityresults in a renewed call for gun control.

2000 The NRA takes a strong stand during the presidentialelection. George W. Bush, a supporter of the NRA, iselected president.

CHRONOLOGYOF

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99

NOTE

S Chapter 1: Kentucky Rifles versus British Rifles

1 Robert L. O’Connell, Soul of theSword: An Illustrated History of Weaponry and Warfare fromPrehistory to the Present. The FreePress, 2002, p. 163.

2 Ibid., p. 1633 National Park Service, Rifle Making

in the Great Smoky Mountains.National Parl Service Popular Study Series, #13, p. 2.

4 Franklin and Mary Wickwire,Cornwallis: The American Adventure.Houghton Mifflin, 1970,pp. 212-216.

5 “The Battle of Kings Mountain,”quoted in Benson J. Lossing, ThePictorial Field-Book of the Revolution.Harper& Brothers, 1959, p. 421.

Chapter 2: Anatomy of the Gun6 Edward Tunis, Weapons: A Pictorial

History. The World PublishingCompany, 1954, p. 68.

7 Samuel Eliot Morison, Samuel deChamplain: Father of New France.Little, Brown and Company, 1972,p. 110.

8 Claude Blair, general editor, Pollard’sHistory of Firearms. Macmillan, 1983,pp. 63-66.

9 Ibid., p. 73.10 Robert L. O’Connell, Soul of the

Sword, pp. 160-161.

Chapter 3: Inventors and Inventions11 Constance McL. Green, Eli Whitney

and the Birth of American Technology.Little, Brown and Company, 1956,pp. 45-49.

12 Robert L. O’Connell, Soul of theSword. The Free Press, 2002,p. 182.

13 Edwin Tunis, Weapons: A PictorialHistory . The World PublishingCompany, 1954, p. 110.

14 Robert L. O’Connell, Soul of theSword, p. 185.

15 Buccaneer Books, The CompletePoetical Works of Henry WadsworthLongfellow. Buccaneer Books, 1993,pp. 56-57.

Chapter 4: The American Civil War16 Fuller, Claud E., The Rifled Musket.

Bonanza Books, p. 39

17 David S. Heidler and Jeanne T.Heidler, Encyclopedia of the AmericanCivil War . ABC-CLIO, 2000,pp. 1654-1655.

18 Harold F. Williamson, Winchester:The Gun that Won the West. CombatForces Press, 1952, p. 38.

Chapter 5: The Wild West19 Albert Marrin, Cowboys, Indians,

and Gunfighters: The Story of theCattle Kingdom. Antheneum, 1993,pp. 127-135.

20 Harold F. Williamson, Winchester:The Gun that Won the West. CombatForces Press, 1952, p. 43.

21 Ibid., p. 67.22 Albert Marrin, Cowboys, Indians,

and Gunfighters: The Story of theCattle Kingdom. Antheneum, 1993,pp. 127-135.

Chapter 6: Arms for Empire23 Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough

Riders. Charles Scribner’s Sons,1899, pp. 1135-136.

24 Sir Hiram S. Maxim, My Life.McBride, Nast & Company,1915, p. 163.

25 Ibid., p. 163.26 Ibid., p. 179.27 Winston Churchill, The River War.

London, 1899, pp. 273-274.

Chapter 7: The Great War28 Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of

August. Macmillan, 1962, p. 71.29 Ibid., p. 122.30 John Keegan, The Illustrated Face

of Battle. Viking Pengin, 1989,pp. 218-227.

31 Byron Farwell, Over There: The United States in the Great War.W.W. Norton, 1999, pp. 87-98.

Chapter 8: Gangsters and G-Men32 Alexander DeConde, Gun Violence

in America: The Struggle for Control.Northeastern University Press, 2001,p. 126-127.

33 Ibid., p. 119.34 New York Times, February 15, 1929.35 Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and

Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover.The Free Press, 1987, p. 179.

36 Alexander DeConde, Gun Violence inAmerica, pp. 89-104.

100

Chapter 9: The Arsenal of Democracy37 David C. Clark, Arms for the

Nation: Springfield Longarms.National Park Service, 1994,p. 58

38 Ibid., p. 5839 Ibid., p. 60

Chapter 10: Hunters, Sportsmen, and Regulators40 Alexander De Conde, Gun Violence

in America: The Struggle for Control.Northeastern University Press, 2001,pp. 89-104.

41 Ibid.,42 New York Times, December 1, 1993.

NOTES

101

BIBL

IOGR

APHY BOOKS

Blair, Claude, ed. Pollard’s History of Firearms. New York: Macmillan, 1983.

Buccaneer Books, The Complete Poetical Works of Henry WadsworthLongfellow. Cutchogue, N.Y.: Buccaneer Books, 1993.

Carter, Gregg Lee. The Gun Control Movement. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Caruso, John A. The Appalachian Frontier: America’s First Surge Westward.Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959.

Churchill, Winston S. The River War. London: 1899.

Clark, David C. Arms for the Nation: Springfield Longarms. Albany, N.Y.:National Park Service, 1994.

DeConde, Alexander. Gun Violence in America: The Struggle for Control.Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001.

Farwell, Byron. Over There: The United States in the Great War. New York:W.W. Norton, 1999.

———. Prisoners of the Mahdi. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

Freedman, Russell. Buffalo Hunt. New York: Holiday House, 1988.

Fuller, Claud E. The Rifled Musket. New York: Bonanza Books, 1958.

Green, Constance McL. Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology.Boston: Little, Brown, 1956.

Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise ofWestern Power. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Johnson, Melvin Maynard. Rifles and Machine Guns of the World’s Armies.Washington, D.C.: The Infantry Journal, 1944.

Keegan, John. The Illustrated Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterlooand the Somme. New York: Viking Penguin, 1989.

Marrin, Albert. Cowboys, Indians, and Gunfighters: The Story of the CattleKingdom. New York: Atheneum, 1993.

Maxim, Hiram S. My Life. New York: McBride Nast, 1915.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France.Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.

National Park Service. Rifle Making in the Great Smoky Mountains.National Park Service Popular Study Series # 13.

———. Rifles and Riflemen at the Battle of Kings Mountain. National ParkService Popular Study Series # 12.

O’Connell, Robert L. Soul of the Sword: An Illustrated History of Weaponryand Warfare from Prehistory to the Present. New York: The Free Press,2002.

102

Powers, Richard Gid. Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover. NewYork: The Free Press, 1987.

Roosevelt, Theodore. The Rough Riders. New York: Charles Scribner’sSons, 1899.

Sugarman, Josh. National Rifle Association: Money, Firepower & Fear.Washington, D.C.: National Press Books, 1992.

Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Tunis, Edward. Weapons: A Pictorial History. New York: The WorldPublishing Company, 1954.

Williamson, Harold F. Winchester: The Gun that Won the West.Washington, D.C.: Combat Forces Press, 1952.

PERIODICALS

Beliveau, Mike. “The Teddy Roosevelt Rig: It’s the Holster and Revolver of This Famous American Frontiersman!” Guns of the Old West(Harris Outdoor Magazines, Spring 2003).

“The Curse of Violent Crime.” Time, March 24, 1981.

The New York Times, 15 February 1939; 1 December 1993.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

103

FURT

HER

READ

ING BOOKS

Carter, Gregg Lee. The Gun Control Movement. New York: Twayne,1997.

Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in theRise of Western Power. New York: Doubleday, 2001.

Keegan, John. The Illustrated Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt,Waterloo and the Somme. New York: Viking Penguin, 1989.

O’Connell, Robert L. Soul of the Sword: An Illustrated History ofWeaponry and Warfare from Prehistory to the Present. New York:The Free Press, 2002.

VIDEOSPBS. Arming the Earth, from Walk Through the Twentieth Century with

Bill Moyers. PBS video series, 1984.

WEBSITESBrady Center to Prevent Gun Violence

http://www.bradycenter.com

The Civil Warhttp://www.civilwar.com

First World War.comhttp://www.firstworldwar.com

How Machine Guns Workhttp://people.howstuffworks.com/machine-gun.htm

The Maxim Machine Gun in World War IIhttp://users.erols.com/hyattg/usmcguns/mgartl1.htm

National Rifle Associationhttp://www.nra.org

RareWinchesters.comhttp://www.rarewinchesters.com

The Second World War Experience Centrehttp://www.war-experience.org/

The Spanish-American Warhttp://www.spanamwar.com

The Springfield Armory National Historic Sitehttp://www.nps.gov/spar/

104

Adams, President John,27-28

Algonquin Indians, 17Amherst, Lord Jeffrey,

8Annie Get your Gun,

(film), 94“Arms Race,” 95“Arsenal at Springfield,

The,” (Longfellow),32-33

Atomic bomb, 85, 95

BattlesArgonne Forest, 70Brandywine Creek,

8Bull Run, 37Cowpens, 12Culloden, 11Gettysburg, 37-38,

40Kings Mountain, 13Little Bighorn, 49-50Marne, 65-66Masurian Lakes, 68Meuse-Argonne, 70Omdurman, 60, 62-

63San Juan Hill, 57,

60Shiloh, 37Somme, 67-68Tannenberg, 68Waterloo, 25-26, 29Waxhaws, 7, 10-11

Black Ben, 7Blackfeet War, 47Blitzkrieg, 81Bloody Ben, 7Bonnie Prince Charlie,

11Bonny and Clyde, 73Boone, Daniel, 10

American frontiers-man, 21

used Kentucky rifle,22

Bootlegging, 72-73Bowling for Columbine,

94“Boys of 61,” 37Brady Bill, The, 92-93

Brady, Sarah, 92Brady, Secretary James,

92-93Brown Bess Musket,

21, 25British use of, 6, 19-

20issued, 19

Brown, Johnattacked Harpers

Ferry, 35as notorious, 35

Browning, John Mosesmanufactured guns,

71Buffalo Bill Cody, 45

his killing buffalo,53

Buffalo Bill Cody’s WildWest Show, 52

“Bull Moose Party,” 78Bureau of Investigation,

76most admired, 77

Burnside, GeneralAmbrose, 37

Bush, George W., 92-93

Cannon, the, 15Capone, Al, 72, 90

arrested on tax evasion,77

as leader of organizedcrime, 74

his machine gun,77

Carolina MountainMen, 10-12

Catapults, 15Champlain, Samuel de,

17Charles Town

surrendered toBritish, 6, 10

Chicagoand bootlegging, 72as gangster center,

72Church, Colonel

William, 77Churchill, Winston

Spencer, 60, 62as journalist, 61

Civil War, 48, 57, 67as deadly, 34end of, 42-43first shots, 35-36

Claudman, Major, 41Clinton, General Henry,

6intrigued by Ferguson

rifle, 9Coloradas, Chief

Mangas, 48Colt, Samuel, 24, 30-31,

46Cooper, Gary, 70, 94Cornwallis, General

Charles, 67his defeats, 12and invasion of

North Carolina,11

his surrender, 13Craig, H. K., 35, 37Crazy Horse, Chief,

49memorial to, 50

Crimean War, 25Crocket, Davy, 10, 23Crompton, Samuel

Willard, 112Crook, General George,

51Cumberland Gap, 21Custer, General George A.,

(“Yellow Hair”)leading cavalry to

Indian territory,50

as ruthless, 49

Duke of Wellington,25

Eastwood, Clint, 94Edison, Thomas, 57Eighteenth Amendment,

72

Federal Armories,31

Ferdinand, ArchdukeFranz, 64his assassination,

68

INDEX

105

INDE

X Ferguson, MajorPatrick, 7his death, 11invented breech-

loading rifle, 89Ferguson rifle, 6, 41

and accuracy, 8trigger guard, 8-9

Five Nations ofIroquois, 17

Forsythe, ReverendAlexander, 24, 28designed percussion

lock, 29his patent, 29

Fredericksburg, 37, 39

Gangster era, 72Garand, John

demonstrated rifle to Army, 83

designed M-1 rifle, 81Gatling, Richard Jordan,

55his inventions, 54

Gentlemen adventurers,18-19

George II, King, 11Germans, 68-69Geronimo, 51, 53Gettysburg, (film), 94G-Men, 77

as heroes, 90Gore, Al, 92-93Grant, General Ulysses

S., 41Great Depression, 80-81

rifles in films, 94Grey, Lord, 65Gunpowder, 15

Haig, General Douglas,67-68

Hamilton, Alexander, 27Henry, Benjamin Tyler,

40Henry Rifle Barrel

Company, 59Heston, Charlton, 88, 94

his dramatic state-ments, 93

as President of NRA,90

Hinckley, John Jr., 93Hitler, 81Holt, J., 35Hood, General, 41Hoover, J. Edgar, 72

chief of Bureau ofInvestigation, 76

Houston, Sam, 23Howe, General William,

89Hundred Years’ War,

15

Jackson, Andrew, 10-11,23

John Paul II, Pope, 92Josef, Emperor Franz,

64

Kalashnikov, Mikhail,87developed AK-47, 86

Kamikaze plane, 84Kennedy, President John

F., 91Kerensky, Alexander

overthrown by Lenin,69

King, Martin Luther,91

Kings Mountain, 6, 11,95

Kitchener, GeneralHoratio, 60

Lee, Robert E., 35, 38,41, 94losing a battle, 39surrendered to grant,

42Lenin, 69Lennon, John, 92“Lock, Stock and Barrel,”

14Longfellow, Henry

Wadsworth, 30his poem of peace,

32-33Longstreet, General

James, 38

Mac Arthur, Generalpraised the M-1, 85

Mahdireligious leader, 60

Malcolm X, 91Maxim, Hiram, 57

and machine gun,58

McGuffey, William H.,37

McKinley, PresidentWilliam, 57, 78

Mead, General George,38

Miles, General Nelson,53

Military technology,14

Morgan, GeneralDaniel, 12-13

Mussolini, 80

Napoleon, 24-25, 34career ended, 25

Napoleonic Wars, 21,25, 29

National Firearms Actof 1937, 79

National Park Service,10

National RifleAssociation, (NRA),77oppose gun regula-

tion, 79and revitalized, 89

Naval technology, 14New York Times, 74Nicholas II, Czar, 68

and overthrown, 69Northwest Passage,

(film), 94

Oakley, Annieas markswoman, 52

Olympic athleteand the modern rifle,

15Oswald, Lee Harvey,

91

Palmer, Mitchell, 76Patton, General, 80

and the M-1, 85Pearl Harbor, 81

106

Percussion lock, 29-30,95

Pickett, General George,38, 40

Plains Indians, 46and the buffalo, 47

Pratt, Francis, 59Pratt and Whitney, 59Prohibition, 72-73

Race riots, 91Ramsey, Colonel

George, 40Ramsour’s Mill, 11Rasputin, 68Readers, (McGuffey),

37Red Cloud, Chief, 48Red Cloud’s War, 47“Red Scare,” 76Regan, President

Ronald, 92Repeating Rifle, 63, 68

changed history, 95developed other

weapons, 95Report on

Manufacturers,(Hamilton), 27

Revolutionary War, 6,13, 21, 23

Ripley, General James,55

Ripley, James Wolfe, 37,40

Roosevelt, PresidentFranklin D., 81on communists, 81

Roosevelt, PresidentTheodore, 55-56, 89and hunter, 79member NRA, 78

Rough Riders,(Roosevelt, T.), 55,57, 78

Russians, 69

Saint Valentine’s DayMassacre, Theand description of,

74-76Saturday Evening Post,

70

Scots Highlanders, 11Second Amendment,

88September 11, 2001, 93Sergeant York, (film),

70Shawnee Indians, 21,

23Sheen, Martin, 94Sherman tank, 83Sherman, William

Tecumseh, 41-42Sitting Bull, Chief, 52Slavery, 33, 43

debates on, 36Soviet Union,

and atomic bomb, 85Spanish-American War,

55-56, 67and use of Maxim

gun, 60Springfield rifle, (1903),

69, 82single-shot, 70

Stalin, 80-81

Tarleton, Banastrehis brutality, 7his defeat, 12slaughtered

Americans, 10Tarleton’s quarter, 7Thompson, Brigadier

General Johndesigned Tommy

Gun, 73-74Tiger Tank, 83Totalitarian dictator-

ships, 80Tse-tung, Mao

and takeover ofChina, 85

Turner’s Rebellion of1831, 35

Union Fort Sumter, 35-36

Union Jack, 11United States of

America, 23

Verdun, 66-67Vietnam War, 31

Walker, Doctor Thomas,21

War of 1812, 28, 31Ward, Nancy, 10Washington, General

George, 89Watt, James, 29

perfected steamengine, 29

Wayne, John, 94Weapons

AK-47, 80, 95Brown Bess, 6, 19-21,

25Browning Pistol,

71Charlevoix musket,

24Colt six-shooter, 31,

44, 46Enfield rifle, 34-35,

37Ferguson rifle, 6, 8-9,

41Flintlock musket, 8,

14, 17Gatling gun, 55-58,

78, 95Henry rifle, 40-41,

44, 48Hotchkiss, 57Kentucky rifle, 6, 10-

13, 22M-1 rifle, 80-81, 84-

86, 95M-14, 86M-16, 95Mangonel, 15Matchlock, 14, 16-17Maxim, 60, 95Rim Fire rifle, 40Springfield rifle, 82Tommy gun, 73-74Vickers machine gun,

66Wheel Lock, 14, 17-

19Winchester rifle, 44-

46, 53, 78Westward movement,

44-45Indian resistance,

48

INDEX

107

Whitney, Eli, 24-25, 29,31birth of, 26inventing cotton gin,

27-28produced rifles,

27and replaceable gun

parts, 28

Winchester, Oliver, 41,44

Winchester RepeatingArms Company, 40

Wingate, Captain George,77

Woolwich, (England),8

World War I, 64

World war II, 81, 83, 85and rifles in films, 94

York, Alvin, 94and Argonne Forest, 71as hero of WWI, 70as pacifist,70

Ziolkowski, 50

INDE

X

108

7: © CORBIS9: © Michael Freeman / CORBIS

15: © ORBAN/CORBIS SYGMA19: © Francis G. Mayer/CORBIS20: Associated Press, Duluth News

Tribune22: © Ted Spiegel/CORBIS26: © Archivo Iconografico, S.A./

CORBIS28: Smithsonian30: Library of Congress, Prints &

Photographs Division,LC-USE6-D-000138

36: Library of Congress, Prints &Photographs Division,LC-USZC4-528

39: Library of Congress, Prints &Photographs Division,LC USZC4-3365

40: © Bettmann/CORBIS42: Library of Congress, Prints &

Photographs Division,LC-US26-1548



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Frontis: © Phil Schermeister/CORBISCover: © Michael Freeman/CORBIS

Samuel Willard Crompton is a historian and biographer living in westernMassachusetts. His father found a Revolutionary bayonet in the familygarden when Crompton was a child, and the author has been interestedin military history ever since.

Crompton is the author or editor of more than 20 books on subjectsthat range from lighthouses to spiritual leaders of the world to militaryleaders who shaped world history. A significant contributor to AmericanNational Biography, published by Oxford University Press, he currentlyteaches history at Holyoke Community College in Massachusetts.

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the repeating rifle (transforming power of technology)

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